


What Not To Wear To A Wedding At Wayne Manor

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:18:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2441714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick and Barbara are getting married, and Hal had ONE JOB. Ending up with a date with Batman was definitely not where he would have predicted his evening was going.</p><p>This little story was inspired by aaajiang's <a href="http://aaajiang.tumblr.com/post/99481032876/hal-jordan">wonderful portrait of Hal Jordan and his green flower</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was the goddamned flower.

Of all the things Bruce had to worry about today—this day, of all days—worrying about Hal Jordan's idiocy was the absolute last goddamn thing he had time for. 

"In," he said roughly, shoving Hal none too gently into the downstairs study and slamming the door behind them. "Off," he said, plucking the ridiculous green carnation out of his buttonhole and throwing it to the floor. 

"What the hell is the matter with you," Jordan said. "Did you skip this morning's meds or something? Give me back my flower!"

"One thing," Bruce said, through gritted teeth. He was struggling to keep his voice calm, but that was always a job around Jordan. No one, not even Jason in his most rebellious teenage years—not even Dick, who had been in many ways a hundred times worse—no one made him want to shriek at the top of his lungs like Hal Jordan did. "I told you _one thing_ about today. Your only job was to not call attention to yourself."

"It's a flower, you fucking freak. What the hell is your—"

"It's a _green_ flower. An abnormally large, ridiculously _green_ flower. It's a way of advertising, in what you probably and erroneously think is a subtle fashion, that you are the Green Lantern. It's your way of being some cringe-worthy combination of clever and adorable, and it's neither one of those things, it is foolish and dangerous, not to mention selfish. This wedding isn't some Justice League event, it is a Gotham society event, and that means every photographer from every newspaper on the East Coast, and quite a few from the West, is going to be here, and your one job was to behave as normally as possible."

"Oh yeah, that shouldn't be a problem," Jordan said, glancing out the window where J'onn was standing on the front lawn. He was wearing an appropriately dull gray suit, with an oversized trench coat wrapped around it—not in itself a bad choice, except that it was eighty degrees outside, and July. He had also opted for the fedora. He was holding a chipmunk. 

"You worry about yourself," Bruce ground out. "Not anybody else. You listen to me and you listen to me good. If you do _anything_ today to jeopardize the safety of the League or God help you, my family, I will _personally_ —"

"Jesus Christ, suck on a douchenozzle why don't you, and don't you ever speak like that to me again. You think I would do anything to put your family at risk, or the League? Fuck you. I'm here to celebrate Dick and Barbara, not have some idiotic argument with you because you forgot to refill your lithium."

"You're here to get drunk and pick up women, which are the only reasons you ever leave the house."

"Yeah? Which one's your date? Point me in her direction, in case she wants to sleep with someone who doesn't need to spank the mackerel with a leather flail to get it up. Now give me my fucking flower."

Bruce lifted his foot and ground it down on the offending bit of foliage, hard. Jordan's eyes went murderous. "You're going to regret that, you little—"

"Hey Bruce?" The door slid open, and Dick's head appeared. The hand Jordan had been reaching toward him turned into a friendly slap of his shoulder, if a little firmer than necessary. "Bruce, Senator Brooking's here, and the mayor. People are starting to arrive and ask me questions I don't know the answer to. Plus, I think it's possible I'm going to throw up."

"You're gonna do great," Jordan said. "There's only one question you need to know the answer to anyway. Anytime someone asks you something, just say 'I do.'"

"Easy for you to say."

"Definitely not true, which is why it's you up there today and not me. You'll do great, kid," Jordan said, easing out the door around Dick. He gave Dick the same squeeze of shoulder he had given Bruce, though probably with less homicidal intent. 

"Bruce? You okay?"

"Yeah," he said, composing himself. It occurred to him he ought to say something reassuring to Dick, though what that would be he had no idea. Being nervous at a wedding was ridiculous anyway, but there was no denying Dick looked a little green around the gills. "Yes, I'm fine. Hal and I were just. . . discussing the wedding. You'll be fine. Everything is. . . fine."

Dick was looking at him skeptically. "And you're still okay with this," he said.

"What, having the ceremony here? Of course, it's the only option that makes sense."

"No, I mean. . . having it at all. You haven't been. . . I mean, I know you're not a fan of our doing this in the first place. So thank you for. . . you know. Everything you've done to make today happen."

Bruce was adjusting his cuffs, and stopped. He was confounded that Dick would think that. Sometimes there were moments when the depth of his failure became apparent, like sighting the abyss beneath you on a flimsy bridge, and you would see how your own inadequacy loomed underfoot, ready to swallow you. He tugged at his cuff.

"Dick," he said. "I am a fan. I am a very big fan. Yes, I raised questions about whether marriage was the right choice for both of you, considering the. . . peculiar circumstances of your lives. Of all our lives." He was silent, remembering the last time they had tried to discuss this, the way their quiet intentness had devolved into shouting. _By tying us publicly to the Gordons you place all of us at risk, you place everything I've built at risk, you risk the exposure of all of our identities—_

_How, you tell me how I'm doing that! You come up with a reason that doesn't come down to either jealousy or spite—that doesn't come down to, I'm miserable and alone and you should be too!_

Maybe Dick's thoughts were in the same place, because there was a cloud over his face, and that wouldn't do, not today of all days. Bruce had wanted today to be perfect for him, and he was ruining it by not knowing the right thing to say. Well, Alfred used to tell him that sometimes if you didn't know the right thing to say, it was because words were not what was called for. So Bruce crossed the room and did the only thing he wanted to do, which was to pull the boy—the man, and when had that happened, when in hell had the skinny smart-ass little boy become this man before him—into his arms, and hold him there.

"I'm proud of you," he managed, though iron fingers were clawing at his throat. "So proud."

The fingers at his throat weren't half as tight as the arms around him. "Bruce," Dick said, his voice strange. Somehow Bruce couldn't make himself let go. So much he should have said, so much he had always meant to say— _I love you, I need you, you are the reason for everything I've done and the first time I held you was when I knew what the real purpose of my life was_ , all the things that seemed impossible to say, and that Dick would maybe not have believed anyway. 

But all he could do was hold him tighter. 

"The two handsomest men in Gotham," said Barbara's voice at the door, and Bruce could feel Dick's smile at her in his whole body. She was leaning against the door, smiling bemusedly at them, and she was breathtaking. She had eschewed a princess-style ballgown for a short swingy dress that showed off her legs, and her hair was down and flowing, and she had never looked so beautiful.

"It's bad luck for me to see you," Dick said with a grin. "There you go, ruining everything. Also, holy _damn_ that dress."

"I know, right?" She gave a little spin and finished with her arms around the both of them. "How are you both so good-looking? You Wayne men are ridiculous, I swear."

Bruce folded his right arm around her. All his misgivings melted away whenever Barbara was around; if anyone could pull off this marriage, it would be her. "How's your father?"

"Self-medicating. I stayed at the house last night, and he tried to talk to me about sex. It was terrifying. I need to not have sex for about six weeks, I think."

"Awesome," Dick said. "That's super. Thanks, Commish."

Bruce laughed and released them, but they had long since ceased to be aware that he was in the room. As usual their eyes were only for each other. "All right," he sighed. "Let's get this show on the road."

"You still wanna do this thing?" Barbara said.

"I do," said Dick.

* * *

By one a.m., the band had dwindled to a lone horn player and the keyboardist, and most of the rest of the musicians were smoking in between desultory sets. Bruce was still wandering the party, shaking hands, slapping backs, his smile more or less frozen in place after some six hours of this, but he was an endurance player, he could do this till dawn if need be. And to judge by some of the partygoers, it was going to be. Some of them were determined to make a night of it, and part of him was pleased to see that the evening had been such a success. 

The enormous white tent was hung with lights that glowed warm and yellow in the July night, and the horn mingled with a woman's rich laughter over at one of the corner tables. Dick and Barbara had long since left, of course, but the party had if anything picked up speed after their departure. 

_We're not actually going anywhere_ , Dick had said. _Honeymoons are ridiculous, and besides, we're not going to waste money on something like that._

Bruce had held his tongue. He had long since given up trying to persuade Dick to use his trust fund for something other than re-investment, but part of him had hoped that now that Barbara was permanently part of the picture, Dick would relax a little about that. Bruce would hold his peace until there were children, but if Dick intended to raise his children in some fanatically Spartan environment just to prove a point. . . 

He downed his champagne. The limo driver had instructions to take them straight to the private hangar, and inform them they were headed for a week on the island. Let Dick back down from that one if he liked, but Barbara was going to know that someone in the family knew how to do things right. 

Hal Jordan sat at a lone table near the dance floor, probably watching the sole couple actually out there dancing. The woman's dress was tight over her rear, and Jordan was regarding her with a careful eye. Bruce set down his champagne next to Jordan's, and eased into the chair. 

"Well they did it," Jordan said.

"That they did."

The brown head swiveled to his. "You don't really approve."

"No."

"Why not? I mean, just out of curiosity. Is it just that happiness anywhere is a threat to unhappiness everywhere?"

Bruce snorted and watched the dancing couple. They were fairly drunk, so the dance was more of a sway, and their swaying was becoming ever more dangerously horizontal. "Good wedding, though," Jordan was saying. "I'll say this about you, you sure as hell know how to throw a party."

"Yes."

"Excellent liquor, too. I guess I'd better head home before I'm too drunk to call a cab."

"Mm," said Bruce. "Hard to see how that could happen, when that's the same glass of champagne you've been carrying around all evening."

Jordan was silent. It had been a deduction, because of course he hadn't been keeping tabs on the man all night long, not in this press of people, but it was one that had hit home. Jordan's face was as still as he'd ever seen it. "I'm not much of a drinker," was all he said.

"How many years," Bruce said quietly. It was only the two of them, and the music masked their talk, and no one was listening. 

"Twelve," he said. "Or it will be twelve, in three days. Next Tuesday."

"Good for you," Bruce said, and he saw Jordan's quick startled glance. Whatever he had been expecting him to say, that hadn't been it. 

"Well, now you can go put 'alcoholic' in that file, next to all the other dirt I'm sure you've dug up on me. You can save that one for our next fight, or the next time I call you on some bullshit at a League meeting."

Bruce fingered the stem of his glass. He recognized it for what it was—a shaft meant to nettle, bait meant to distract him. "I'm betting you're not," he said. "Alcoholic, that is. I'm betting alcohol was not your chosen method of self-destruction, is what I mean."

"Oh yeah? What would you guess?" Over in the opposite corner of the tent, an argument was becoming heated. Two men, and Bruce only recognized one, but it only took one politician to make an argument. Politics and an open bar, what could possibly go wrong. 

"I would guess cocaine," he said equably. "As a pilot you would gravitate toward a stimulant, and coke is easy to transport and hide. Expensive, but you made decent money, and didn't have much to spend it on except more blow."

"Good guess," Jordan said, after another long silence. 

"Alcohol is a depressant," Bruce said, with a nod at the flute of champagne. "You're probably safe."

"I'm kind of a stickler."

Bruce nodded. He rose and drained his glass until there was a finger of champagne left. He set down the nearly empty flute and reached for Jordan's. "There you go," he said. "Makes a better prop that way. And now there's a fight I need to go stop, before the honorable gentleman from the state of New York makes an even larger horse's rear of himself. Thanks for coming tonight," he said, and extended his hand.

Tentatively, Jordan took it. "Sure," he said. There was something unreadable in his eyes—surprise, wariness maybe. 

"Risperidone," Bruce said. "Not lithium. In case you were wondering."

Jordan shut his eyes briefly. His hand on Bruce's tightened. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."

"I've got to go prevent a scene over there."

"Yeah. Go do a job."

Bruce let go of his hand and made a beeline for the loud voices, wondering how drunk he would need to pretend to be to intervene effectively there, or if he would need to go straight for the big guns and summon Alfred.

* * *

Hal took Monday off because he had food poisoning from the cheap take-out he had ordered Sunday night. Barry was always lecturing him about learning to cook. It wasn't that; Hal knew how to cook. But it was too complicated to explain to Barry why he didn't like to do it, and what it reminded him of. All of which was to say that by the time Tuesday rolled around, he was behind on flights he needed to log, and he ended up staying late in order to squeeze in an extra one, and by the time he made it to the locker room and collapsed on a bench with his head against the cool metal locker, he had almost forgotten it was Tuesday the eleventh of July, until the package arrived.

"Hey Hal," Carol said, sticking her head in the locker room, because that was Carol, she wasn't going to let a little thing like a sign that said "Men Only" deter her. 

"I could have been naked," he protested. 

"Yeah, that's just my loss," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Did you get your package?"

"What?" he asked, still a bit bleary from the throwing up the day before and the overwork today, and maybe he should have just stayed home today too, only Carol probably would have eviscerated him. "What about my package?"

She sighed even more loudly. "Get your mind out of the gutter, you moron. A package came for you. Hang on," and she disappeared. She was back a minute later with a small box, which she plopped on the bench beside him. "If that's volatile material, noxious chemicals, or otherwise illegal substances, Ferris Air is holding you responsible," she said, the door swinging shut behind her. 

"'Kay," he said, squinting curiously at the package. No return address. He agreed with Carol, that was mildly alarming. He tore into the brown paper wrapping and discovered a clear plastic box inside. And inside the box was. . .

"Hah," he said with a grin. It was a giant green carnation, as big and as gaudy as the one he had had in his buttonhole on Saturday. He pulled out the flower and looked at it. He stuck it in one of the pockets of his flight suit, hoping Carol might walk back in and ask him about it. And then he saw the small envelope tucked under the tissue paper wrapping.

He opened the envelope, which said only _Congratulations_ on the outside, in a careful hand he actually recognized. Inside were two tickets to tomorrow's Gotham Knights game, and if he knew anything about seat numbering, they were excellent seats. "Well I'll be goddamned," he said aloud.

He sat there and looked at the tickets for a minute, considering. 

So, a congratulatory gift. A congratulatory gift, packaged with what amounted to an apology, though he knew Bruce Wayne's lips would necrotize and fall off before he would ever utter the words _I'm sorry_. But this was pretty damn close. At the very least, a burying of the hatchet. And the tickets — that was a nice touch, though one maybe born of an instinct to one-upmanship. 

It was a way of saying, _go and have a nice time, and good on you_. Maybe a way of assuring that what he had shared would not be shared with anyone else—though really, Bruce's confidence about the risperidone had assured him of that. This was. . . this was maybe something else.

He fingered the tickets. 

He could possibly be wrong. 

He was probably wrong.

He ran the tallies again in his head, and the equation still came up short. The odds were, he was dead wrong. 

On the other hand. . . 

On the other hand, he wouldn't be where he was today if he was averse to a little risk-taking. 

He reached for his phone and hit the number. Bruce answered on the second ring.

"Yeah," he said. It was a _don't bother me now_ voice. Hal was unperturbed. 

"So I was wondering," he drawled. "Turns out, I kind of hit the lottery today, and I scored two totally sweet tickets to tomorrow's game, and I was just wondering. Are you a Knights fan, by any chance?"

The silence on the other end was so long he didn't think Bruce was going to answer at all. "Upon occasion," he said at last. "When they're not sucking. Why, you feeling generous?"

"I am, in fact. Care to join me? The Knights are six-and-oh right now, I think that qualifies as not sucking."

"I would agree, but never underestimate their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Meet you at the Dome at 5:30, then."

"Sounds good," Hal said, but then he realized Bruce had already hung up. "Freak," he muttered.

He looked at the tickets and thought some more. Then he slipped them in his breast pocket next to the ridiculous flower, and grinned. No, it didn't add up in the least. But he was, in the end, a good enough pilot to know you couldn't always trust to the math. 

He grabbed his jacket and headed out the door, still whistling an aimless tune.


	2. Chapter 2

"I don't actually have a word for how revolting that is," Bruce said, watching him plow into his second chili cheese dog with extra relish and mustard. It was the kind of mustard that was so many removes from actual food it was a vibrant, unreal yellow, and its taste was the same flat metallic tang you got from licking a schoolyard swingset. In other words: just about damn perfect.

"Jealous," Hal said, around a mouthful of dog. "Least I'm not drinking the beer. God knows what's in that swill. They probably take a piss in the kegs for fun. Come to think of it, piss would improve the flavor of hockey-game beer—if memory serves, anyway."

Bruce snorted, and took another sip off his beer, which he had been nursing for most of the third quarter. Their seats were good, but not obtrusively good, and the arena was crowded but not too crowded tonight, so they could talk undisturbed, leaning against the unoccupied seats behind them. It was amazing how Bruce could disappear in a crowd like this—frayed baseball cap pulled low over his face, slightly tattered hoodie, loose jeans. Any working class Joe, come to watch the game. Hockey fans weren't likely to get that excited over Bruce Wayne, or maybe even know who he was, but this was Gotham, after all, and he was clearly taking no chances. It was funny, though, seeing him quite this casual. Hal had seen Bruce out of costume maybe half a dozen times, and of those times once had been in a tux and all the other times in a black turtleneck. He probably had racks of black turtlenecks in his closet, and a button he could press to rotate the racks of clothes, like at the dry cleaner. _Which black turtleneck shall I wear today, Alfred?_

"Something funny?" Bruce said, with a glance at him over his beer. 

"Just speculating which Robin you borrowed the human clothes from. Holy shit, look at that save." He coughed on the last bit of his dog, gesturing at the ice. Bruce watched the game with the same calm impassivity he had all night, and then turned back to Hal.

"I'm not sure which part of that to attack first—that you clearly think I don't own actual clothes, or that you think I am remotely the same size as any of my sons."

Hal took a swig off his bottled water. Funny how even the water here managed to taste metallic. "Never heard you do that," he said.

"Do what?"

"Refer to them as your sons."

"I don't, in the field."

"Yeah, I know, I wasn't—I was just saying. I didn't mean—okay, I'm gonna shut up now."

He heard Bruce's soft snort of laugh, and they watched the game in quiet for a while. The Knights were for once not sucking. It was funny what watching the violence on the ice was like, for someone who lived real violence for their day job. It was choreographed, cartoonish almost, like it was happening at several removes from reality, not unlike the mustard. Around them people groaned or cheered or hooted; the two of them watched impassively, sunk in calm sociopathic companionship.

It occurred to Hal they should have placed a bet, but betting with Bruce would be both unfun and profoundly unsporting. A bet needed the potential to hurt the loser in order to be worth something. "So speaking of," Hal said after the quarter buzzer sounded.

"Speaking of what?"

"Your family."

"We weren't."

"Yeah, but you heard anything from Dick and Barbara?"

"No, and I don't expect to."

"Still on the honeymoon, huh?"

"That's the idea."

"So how come you don't approve? I mean, I said that about you disliking happiness, but seriously, that's about the only reason I can think of you would be down on those two. They're like, the crown prince and the. . . I don't know, pick your fairy tale. Like a royal wedding, is what I mean."

"Do I need to remind you how royal weddings generally turn out?"

"Ah," said Hal, wiping his hands of the remains of chili cheese dogs. "I see. So since you're unable to keep a woman, Dick must be too. So who gives a shit, they get divorced in ten years. That's long enough to keep the gifts, and get some decent enjoyment out of the whole process. Oh wait a minute, I see—I see now where this is headed. You're worried that pre-nup's not airtight enough. She's gonna get her filthy Irish hands on the Wayne family fortune."

Bruce shook his head, and snorted again. He went back to watching the game. Hal knocked his knee against Bruce's. "I'm serious, though," he said. "I'm curious, I really am. No more jokes, my hand to God. Why are you not throwing the biggest handfuls of confetti at the two of them? I'll be honest here, I think they're your best shot for grandkids."

Bruce took another slow sip of his beer, as the Knights' forward slammed into the retaining wall, shuddering the seats beneath them. "Dick needs to believe the best of people," he finally said, after Hal had given up on him answering.

"And that's bad?"

"That's. . . dangerous. It means he is liable to disappointment. But it's something he's always done, from the time he was—" He broke off, lost in some memory he was obviously not going to share with Hal. "When Dick loves someone with all his heart, he tends to believe things about them that are optimistic at best, illusory at worst. It's dangerous, is all."

"Wait, you think the problem is, Dick is somehow going to discover his wife is not perfect, and his heart will break into a million sparkly pieces?"

"You're over-simplifying, as usual."

"Yeah, and you're a moron as usual. Newsflash, Dick loves you that way, for whatever reason. And you two still manage to have an actual relationship, with minimal bloodshed."

Bruce was stretched out, his long legs extended. He appeared to be looking at the tips of his scuffed sneakers. His face had that same closed-off look as before, like he was thinking about something that wasn't for Hal. "Not all that minimal," he said. 

"So you two have had to work some stuff out. Well, marriage is work too, from what I hear. I mean, look at Ollie and Dinah. They're the only functional marriage I know, but they somehow make it happen. Also, I thought of something else," he said, knocking his knee against Bruce's again. "You're forgetting Barbara. I'm pretty sure everything you're saying is shit she's already thought of, just because thinking of shit before anyone else does is kind of her job. She's probably already got a plan in place. Oh come on, that was clearly out of bounds, what the fuck," he called down to the ice, his attention back to the game.

"So your suggestion is, let the woman figure it all out?"

"Well. . . yeah?"

"That's as short-sighted as it is misogynistic."

"Of course I'm a misogynist," Hal sighed. "I'm a dude. Why wouldn't I unconsciously support the power structures that benefit me, even while I gain social credit by distancing myself from them? It's a win-win for me as a male. That's just basic Foucaultian power dynamics, man, I don't know what to tell you."

Bruce was looking at him like he had begun to bleed out the eyeballs. "You read Foucault," he said. 

"I read anything people leave lying around, but I can see how that's confusing your whole narrative of 'Hal Jordan attended the Air Force Academy while illiterate and high as balls.' Well, okay, that last one is kind of true, actually."

Bruce's laugh took him by surprise. Hal laughed too, and Bruce reached for his beer again. And then he quickly set it down, and slid lower in his seat. "Damn," he muttered.

"What's the—oh," Hal said. Overhead, the jumbotron had flickered to life, and the camera had found Bruce. In case there was any doubt, the yellow flashing text scrolling at the bottom read, _Bruce Wayne!!!_ People in the seats around were craning to get a look at him, probably trying to figure out who he was. Bruce had tugged his cap lower. "Sorry," he said. "I guess that was inevitable."

The camera was panning to Hal now too, and Hal obligingly gave it a grin. "No worries," he said. "I've never gone somewhere with anyone famous before. This sort of thing tend to happen?"

"It does. It's a sad world where the size of a bank account is enough to make you a celebrity."

"Yeah," Hal said. "But to be fair, you don't exactly keep a low profile. I'm pretty sure it's not your bank account most people know you for. I see the same tabloids everyone else does, I know what you get up to."

Bruce gave an elaborate snort at that. "I know, I know," Hal said. "All part of the cover. I'm just saying, in none of those pictures do you look like you're having a bad time."

"If I did, that would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe," Hal conceded. They lapsed back into silence long enough to watch the Knights predictably tank with just minutes to go in the quarter. Everyone around them was screaming and on their feet, which occasionally obscured their view of the ice; Bruce sipped his beer philosophically. Hal watched him out of the corner of his eye. He looked like he had other things on his mind, but that could have just been his resting face; Bruce always looked like he had something else on his mind that was far more important than listening to you, and nine times out of ten it looked like that thing was eviscerating you and slowly feeding you your own intestines. Most of the time he was probably just thinking about his lunch.

They made their way to the exit slowly and in silence, hanging back so the jostling and yelling throng of (justifiably) angry Knights fans could swell the exits first. Bruce had zipped his hoodie and pulled it over his baseball cap, so he was back to looking nondescript again. Hal shuffled alongside him, amazed at how Bruce could reduce his not inconsiderable physical presence in a crowd like this. People were bumping into him on all sides, ignoring the guy who was just loping along with his head down. 

Hal tossed his water in the recycle bin, and afterward they walked to the subway station together, still in comfortable silence. There was something relaxing about being in the company of someone as socially challenged as Bruce; it did have a way of setting the conversational bar low. "Hey, I forgot to say thank you," he said, after the downtown train had whizzed by them, and the platform had emptied of everyone but them and the unconscious wino slumped against the stairs. 

Bruce shrugged. "Thanks for the invite," he said. His eyes were absent and on the rails. He was catching the uptown train, which only came through this station every thirty minutes or so. Hal could have caught the downtown last time—he was only going two stops before his connection—but it seemed rude to leave Bruce here waiting on his own, and in truth, he hadn't wanted to leave. 

"You shoulda driven," Hal said. "You coulda been home by now."

"Ruins the experience," Bruce said.

"I can see that," Hal said. He was pacing the platform, his eyes on the uptown tunnel. The wino's mouth had slipped open a little more, gone a little more slack. There was a snake of drool that caught the warm yellow lights in the station and glistened. The station was quiet. Hal kept his hands in his pockets. Bruce was leaning against the wall, still as a meditating Buddha.

"So listen," Hal said. "I actually had a great time tonight."

"You sound surprised."

"Well. . . yeah, I am a little."

"Diplomatic as ever."

Hal paced some more, thinking. The uptown train kept not arriving. The station was still quiet. "The thing is," Hal said. "I may be about to ruin a really awesome evening."

The eyes he had thought so absent were sharply focused. Nothing else in his body moved. "Then don't," Bruce said.

"Yeah," Hal said, considering. "I see that point. I do. But you know what, the thing is. . ." He paced a little bit more, just to give himself the energy for it. "The thing is, I think I'm gonna."

"Hal," Bruce said, and it wasn't the voice of five minutes ago. He was pretty sure it was meant to be a warning. 

"Nope, too late, I'm gonna," he said, and he leaned in and brushed his mouth against the side of Bruce's face. Just a slide of his lips, but Bruce wasn't turning his face away or shoving Hal onto the third rail—the latter having been as distinct a possibility as the former—but actually turning his face a little bit _toward_ Hal's, of all things. He was still leaning against the wall.

So Hal took a breath and let his lips move to Bruce's, and that was the point where his evening stopped making any kind of sense.

Where his life, actually, stopped making any kind of sense. 

Kissing on a subway platform: kinda strange. Hal had never been one for making out in public, and while there wasn't anyone else around, wino excepted, it was still a bit surreal.

Kissing Bruce Wayne: a thousand times stranger.

Or really. . . strange because it was not. Strange because it was both intensely erotic and intensely familiar, strange because it was the first time he had ever kissed anyone where he wasn't mapping his next move, wasn't thinking about what came next. Strange because it wasn't quite like any kissing he'd ever done before, strange because the platform felt unstable beneath his feet, and his chest was hammering oddly, and there were warm hands sliding around his waist, and when he broke off to gasp, it wasn't for air but because he couldn't get his head around what was happening to his body, the way it was responding — like it didn't belong to him, almost, like he had stopped owning it about five minutes ago. 

Of all the places he had thought he would be tonight, standing on a subway platform leaning his forehead against Bruce Wayne's while struggling to get his breath back was not even close to anywhere on the list.

And then they were kissing again, and now they weren't fucking around. 

He had his hands around Bruce's waist, both of them inside each other's jackets now, and their hips were up against each other's now—their cocks, actually, to call the thing what it was. There was a definite bulge in Bruce's jeans. "Goddamn," Hal murmured, and Bruce made some small noise in his throat that Hal took for assent, or possibly commentary. Hal slid one of his hands around Bruce's neck. They were full-on making out now, both of them sort of underneath Bruce's hoodie, just two weirdos in scruffy clothes up against the wall.

"God, yeah," Hal whispered, as Bruce shifted a little, and their mouths were back together, and why had they never thought of doing this before? Why had he never thought of this, of them like this? Or. . . had he? Maybe that was the answer to why no one got under his skin like Bruce—because, well, maybe nobody got under his skin like Bruce. He would have to kiss him some more to find out, to explore all the answers, he would have to taste every last—

Bruce had pulled back, his head resting against the tiled wall, his eyes on Hal's. Their faces were just an inch or so apart. "Hal," he said softly.

"Yeah baby," he said, and he didn't know where that _baby_ came from, but it sounded completely natural, it was the only word he knew to use. Bruce's hand was still on his neck.

"We can't," Bruce said, and his face was back against Hal's now, his breath warm against Hal's ear.

"We. . . what?" The words didn't make sense. Couldn't what?

"We can't," Bruce said again. There was something odd in his voice.

"Um, I kind of think we can, and we are," he pointed out. He snugged their hips together more firmly. 

"We can't," Bruce said, a third time, like it was the only thing he knew to say, and that was when it hit Hal what he was saying. 

"Bullshit," Hal said angrily. "Look, my apartment's just two station's away. We get on the next downtown train, we're there in fifteen minutes. Bruce. Come on, you don't—you, you don't mean that, you—"

Bruce's face was implacable, but his eyes were locked on Hal's. They were sad, and infinitely remote, and holy fucking shit, this was really happening. It was actually happening to him. The universe had given him this. . . thing, this thing that in five minutes had explained practically his whole life to him, that had made all the pieces of the universe click into place, this thing that was like somebody smacking him upside of the head with a baseball bat and saying, _THIS, this was what you were missing, you idiot, it was right under your face the whole time_ , and now. . . now it was leaving, just as quickly, and forever. That much was clear in Bruce's face, in his eyes. 

"Bruce," he said, his throat tight. There was a rush of wind against his back and bright lights, and that was the uptown train, it was Bruce's train, Bruce was extricating himself from Hal's arms and pulling his hood up again, thrusting his hands in his pockets. He was still looking at Hal, and all the words died on Hal's lips, all the things he could possibly say: _you can't be serious_ , and _come on, you're going to walk away from this?_ and _ten years for us to figure this out, and you can't give me ten minutes?_

He would never kiss Bruce Wayne again. He watched Bruce get on the train. Bruce hung on a strap by the window, and his eyes were still watching Hal. Hal watched him too, just a steady gaze across the platform. Bruce's eyes were level, and they weren't moving from Hal. Then the train was sliding away from the platform, and small chunks of Hal's flesh were being ripped off his chest and landing with wet bloody smacks on the concrete, and by the time the train was around the curve, its lights lost to sight, he was done, he was finished, he was over. 

He braced his hands against the tile wall and struggled for breath, beat down the yell that wanted to claw its way out his throat. 

"Got some change, man?" slurred the wino as he stalked past him, on the way to the downtown platform.

"Go fuck yourself," Hal muttered.


	3. Chapter 3

Dick moved on silent feet, but he didn't fool himself he was unheard. The slight tilt of dark head at the computer monitor told him Bruce was aware of the quiet steps behind him. "How was the honeymoon," Bruce said, not turning around.

"Not bad," Dick said. He slid into the chair opposite Bruce with a grin. "The island was a nice touch. I'll admit, you made me look pretty good."

"Somebody needed to. How's Barbara?"

"Exhausted. She can't sleep on a plane, so she's crashed now. Thought I would sneak over and say hey to you and whoever's around."

Bruce turned in the chair enough to take in his appearance. Dick knew his tan was fresh, his eyes rested, and the smile pretty much permanently glued to his face. _I'm stupid happy_ , he had murmured into Babs's hair just last night, and she had gripped his hand in the touch that meant _I'm right there with you_. Bruce just grunted, and turned back to the monitor.

"You're back early," was all Bruce said.

"There's only so much nothing you can do before you start to get antsy. Besides, Babs's mother is seeing a new rheumatologist at the end of the week, and she's nervous about it, and Babs thought she should fly back and hold her hand, and I wasn't gonna let her do that alone. So we came on back. How've things been here? Calm enough?"

"Calm enough," Bruce replied. He was still looking at the keyboard. There were no lights in the cave but the blue wash of the monitors, and if you didn't know Bruce, know him inside and out, it would have been easy to miss. 

"Bruce," Dick said, his voice quieter now. "What's wrong?"

And amazingly, Bruce didn't reply. Nine thousand times he must have asked Bruce that question, in the course of his life, and eight thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine times the reply had been a snarled, _Nothing_. But this time, Bruce was just sitting there, making no response, and then Dick realized he wasn't actually doing anything at the computer—there wasn't anything of significance happening at the monitors, and he probably hadn't looked at them for hours. He was just. . . sitting here. 

"What happened," Dick said, "is everyone all right? Is anyone—"

"Everyone's fine. I'm fine. Go upstairs and let Alfred know you're here, he'll be happy to see you."

"It's two in the morning," Dick said. "So I doubt that. Bruce. What the hell happened? Were you on patrol tonight?"

"No. And nothing happened, calm down. I'm tired, that's all."

Dick stared at him. Strange to think you could live twenty years of your life with someone and never hear the words _I'm tired_ out of their mouth. Almost it panicked him more than the strange absent expression on Bruce's face. _You can't be tired, you're never tired_ , he wanted to protest. A child's protest, but he was no longer a child, and Bruce was no longer a young man, and he was allowed to be tired. If tired was what it was. Everything told him it was more than that, though.

Dick sat and stared at his hands. "Okay," he said. "So you don't want to talk about it, I'm guessing."

"You guess correctly."

"Okay. Well. . . the truth is, I came over because there's something I wanted to talk to you about." 

The small flicker around Bruce's eyes was the only tell. "Can it wait," he said hoarsely.

"Not really, no. I promise it won't take long. It's just that—before the wedding, when I told you that Barbara and I were getting married. I said some things that—"

Bruce made an impatient gesture. "Please hear me out," Dick said. "You don't have to say anything. But what I said—it was unforgivable. It was cruel. I just wanted you to know I don't think that. And the other thing is. . . the other thing is, I think I understand why you didn't want us to get married."

Bruce was still just looking at the keyboard, so Dick plowed ahead. "It's because of working together," he said. "It's as simple as that, isn't it?"

Bruce still didn't look at him. "Yes," he said. 

"Yeah, I get that now," Dick said. "I get it because on the flight back home, Babs was talking about this case she's been working on for a couple of months now, and I realized. . . I realized we're going to get home, and she's going to suit up, and nothing will have changed—she's going to do her job and I'm going to do mine, and I'm going to love her just as much as I did before, but. . .it's also different. Maybe there's something to that 'one flesh' thing, I don't know. But the thought of her out there, of something happening to her. . ." He trailed off. 

"Dangerous," Bruce supplied. "The word you're looking for is dangerous. It will get one of you killed. One day, one of you will make a mistake you wouldn't otherwise have made. Because you're trying to protect the other, because you're distracted by your fear, because of a thousand possible reasons."

"Bruce," Dick said gently. He pushed down the instinctual surge of anger; yelling now—once again, when he had come here to apologize—would help no one. "I get that, I do. But I love her. Married or not, I'm going to be liable to the same mistakes. If anything, getting married makes us maybe. . . safer. Maybe it gives us that little extra bit of stability, of reassurance. Maybe it makes it easier for us to get our jobs done, who knows. But it certainly doesn't mean I love her more than I did six months ago. Or six years ago, for that matter. The danger was already there, if danger is what you want to call it."

But Bruce had gone back to staring at the keyboard. Dick should have left it there, but when had he ever left well enough alone, where Bruce was concerned? "And also," he persisted, "the whole 'don't date someone on your team' thing is kind of a load of crap. That's just another way of saying, don't date anybody. Because otherwise, you're just resigning yourself to a series of relationships with people who don't and can't understand the real you, know who you really are, what you really care about. Being with someone who shares our life, that's the only real possibility for people like us. You're basically just saying, be alone forever."

"Yes," Bruce said. The keyboard continued to fascinate him. There were lines on his fact that hadn't been there a week ago. He didn't look tired; he looked exhausted. And sadder, maybe, than Dick had ever seen him. And then he roused, looked over at Dick.

"Look," he said, clearing his throat. "I'm happy to debate this with you all you want, though to what point I don't know, because we're just going to disagree, and you've made your decision anyway. We can talk about it tomorrow. But. . . not tonight, all right? Just. . . " And he rubbed his forehead, resting it on his fingertips, his eyes closed. "Just not tonight."

He was wearing a battered hoodie and jeans; wherever he had been tonight, it wasn't on patrol. Dick took in all the parts of him he hadn't seen before, and he knelt beside Bruce's chair. He put a hand on Bruce's shoulder. "Bruce," he said, more quietly. "What happened."

"Nothing happened," Bruce snapped. "What happened was nothing. I'm fine."

There was the Bruce he remembered. The man of five minutes ago, who looked like he was slowly bleeding out, had vanished like the flip of a switch, and the Bruce he knew was back. Bruce pushed off his hand and stood; stalked to the medbay, turning on lights, opening a few drawers. "Go on upstairs," he said. "At least leave a note for Alfred. And you might as well make yourself useful and turn on the coffeemaker while you're up there. I expect I'm going to be up for a while."

Dick watched him open and slam drawers, pull out equipment and discard it, flip on monitors and flip them off again. "Okay," Dick said after a while, because clearly the conversation was over. "Well. If you did want to talk about it—if that's something you ever wanted—you know I'm here to listen. I won't even have to say anything, if you don't want. I can just listen."

There was no indication Bruce had heard him, but he had known there wouldn't be. He walked out as quietly as he had entered, and he didn't remember about the coffeemaker until he was back at his—their—place, and was peeling off his sweatshirt and climbing into bed. But that was all right; Bruce had really been saying it just to get him out of there, to get him away. He considered texting Alfred and telling him to keep an eye on Bruce, that something was off with him, but that was pointless. Alfred didn't need Dick to tell him when something was wrong with Bruce.

"Hey," Barbara murmured, shifting beside him.

"Hey yourself," he whispered back, sliding closer to her impossibly warm body. Her eyes flew open, and she shoved him away.

"Ow ow ow get away you're cold," she said. "Jesus Christ. Where were you?"

"The cave. Just saying hey to Bruce."

Her canny eyes missed nothing, even fuzzed by twelve hours' sleep. "What's wrong?"

He sighed. "Nothing. Something. I don't know. Something happened tonight, but he didn't want to talk about it."

She didn't dismiss him, or roll her eyes, or make some comment about _what else is new_. She propped her head on her elbow and squinted at him, her hair a lion-like mane of tangles around her. "You're worried," she said.

"Yeah."

"What did he say?"

"It's more what he didn't say. He was. . . I don't know, he was just somewhere else. I couldn't even bait him into a good fight."

"Well," she said, "I know I don't need to tell you this, but shutting down is kind of the way Bruce deals with things."

"Yeah," he said again. "And I would agree with you, standard M.O. and all that, except for one thing."

"What's that?"

"The giant hickey on his neck he was obviously completely unaware of."

Her eyes widened further, and they weren't sleep-dazed anymore. "You're kidding."

"Nope. Right on the left side of his neck, one of the biggest I've ever seen. Whoever he was with, someone was doing a righteous job of it."

"Holy shit." Barbara was sitting up now. "Okay, hang on, just trying to wrap my head around this one."

He laughed. "What, that Bruce has sex? Trust me, he has a lot of it. Ordinarily, I wouldn't think twice about it. I would just think, well, he and Selina got a little out of hand tonight, no big deal. Except he said he wasn't on patrol tonight, and I believe him. Wherever he was, it was somewhere else. And I'll lay money it wasn't Selina."

"Bruce with a hickey," she said, like she was still fixated on that.

"Yeah, it is kind of a strange one. I mean like I said, the man gets around, but I've never seen that. Whoever he was with was someone who made him forget why above-the-collar kisses are a terrible idea."

"Are they," she said, rubbing his hand and lacing the fingers in his.

"You know what I mean. But whatever happened tonight, it didn't go well. You should have seen his face. He looked like someone had shot his dog."

"He hates Titus, I think he'd be okay with that."

"He doesn't hate Titus, I think he's moved to grudging acceptance."

"Does Bruce have any other kind?"

"Oh sure, there's mildly resentful acceptance, soon-to-be-vengeful acceptance, implacably murderous acceptance. . . the list goes on. The dog is fine, and it was a metaphor anyway."

"A simile, actually."

"Please stop showing off that you are smarter than me. I know you are, you know you are, what really is gained by these reminders?"

She lifted his hand and kissed it, nuzzling his palm. "Try to get some sleep. Come curl up, I'll even let you snuggle if you promise to keep a layer of sheet in between us. You're still cold."

"I see how it is," he said. "So this is marriage, huh." But he slid down in the covers and let her wrap him up, her arms tightening around him. 

"I'll tell you what else," he said after a while, into the dark.

"Mm."

"If someone hurt him, I am going to find them and rip their arms off their body. Maybe their legs too. Then I'm going to take them for a drag in Gotham Bay, and tie them to a buoy for the sea vultures to eat."

She stroked his chest. "It's funny," she said softly. "When I met you, that was one of the first things I realized about you, was how protective you were of him."

"Somebody needs to be." 

She lifted her head. "Kiss me."

He obliged, and he slid down lower in the sheets, easing his way toward some warm naked expanse of flesh. She raised her head again. "Sea vultures?"

"Work with me here." 

He kissed the throaty laugh out of her mouth, and then her hands got to roaming, and it was hard to remember that somewhere in the world there was trouble and pain, when his bed—his hands, his heart, his mouth—was full of so much joy.

* * *

Bruce was sitting back in his chair when his text alert sounded. He didn't look at it for a minute or so. Odds were it was Dick, probably repeating his well-meant offer of before. But after a bit he glanced at it, just to make sure.

It was from Hal.

 _I owe you an apology_ , it read.

That surprised him. Whatever he had expected, it hadn't been that. _For?_

 _You said no, and I was that asshole who couldn't listen to no, and I got pushy, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be that asshole. I hate that asshole. That's all I wanted to say._

He was texting back before he let himself think about it too long. _You have nothing to apologize for_ , he wrote, and set the phone down. Terse, to the point, conversation over. Jordan would get the message.

But evidently not, because not six seconds later the phone binged again.

 _Well thanks_ , it said. _And I'm respecting that no, I totally am, and in some weird twisted way I actually understand the reasons for it, which either means that I'm maturing, or that I've spent so much time around you that my emotional constipation has reached toxic levels._

Bruce let himself smile at that. It wouldn't hurt, since no one could see. _But here's the thing_ , Hal texted. 

Bruce just watched the screen.

 _Are you still there?_ it asked.

 _I'm here_ , he wrote back.

_The thing is, I had a really great time tonight. And I was thinking. I just want to be around you some more. Can we do that?_

Bruce hesitated before he answered. Too many possible responses. He finally settled on, _Dangerous._

_It doesn't have to be. Hands to myself, I swear. Look, I get what you were saying tonight, I do. But surely that can't mean that we don't get to be around each other, that we don't get even that much._

He hated the thing in his chest that leaped at it. That was the surest sign of danger. _Bruce_ , Hal wrote. _Trust me. I do have at least some self-control, I'm not going to be an asshole._

_Why do you assume it's your self-control I'm doubting?_

That silenced Hal for a while, as he had figured it would. _I don't have an ulterior motive here_ , came up after a while. _I just want us to hang out. Completely platonic._

_I've read enough Plato to know what a bad idea that is. I suspect you have too._

There was no answer, and it occurred to him there wasn't going to be—that Hal had taken that for a final no. The leap in his chest tightened, and he was typing quickly. _So what did you have in mind_ , he wrote.

 _I don't know_ , Hal wrote back. _I'll come up with something. You free tomorrow night?_

 _Yes_ , he had typed. _I can be_. Well, Dick could take patrol. Dick had certainly been taking it easy recently, and from the look on his face when he had left the cave, he was probably convinced Bruce was dying of a brain tumor, so he would be sympathetic and likely to say yes. 

_Awesome. I'll text the deets._

Bruce rolled his eyes. _I just said deets to make you roll your eyes did it work? Jesus i gotta stop txting you all this punctuation is giving me a migraine._

Bruce allowed himself the laugh on that one, and then he clicked his phone to silent and slipped it on the charger. He could still catch a few hours' sleep, if he tried. He stood up and shuffled to the cot tucked beside the medbay, where he collapsed in a blanketless heap until dawn, his mind a blissful blank.

* * *

After a while, Dick slipped out of bed. He was restless and was clearly not going to sleep anytime soon, and he didn't want to keep Babs awake. He padded to the kitchen and fixed himself a bowl of cereal, crunching it quietly and even putting the top back on the milk. Such was the maturity of married life.

He stood in the kitchen absently poking at his Cinnamon Toast Wheelios with his spoon, and clicked on the TV. He kept it on mute, but flicked around, mainly to news outlets, checking to see if there was anything he had missed while being tuned out of the world on a desert island in the South Pacific. Sadly, it looked like the same old shitshow, so he flipped over to sports, where they were running the wee-hours recap of the week's sporting events. 

The Knights' game was the predictable bloodbath, but he watched the re-plays and crunched his cereal until the moment when he stopped crunching. Stopped swallowing. Set down his cereal bowl. 

"Well I'll be goddamned," he whispered to himself. 

They were showing some of the jumbotron footage. There, larger than life, and dressed exactly as Dick had seen him a few hours ago, was Bruce. Same T shirt, same scruffy hoodie. He was ducking his head away from the camera, but he looked relaxed. At ease, almost. And then the camera panned to the person beside him—to Hal. Hal flashed a patented grin—handsome people who knew they were handsome were irrationally annoying to Dick—and turned back to say something to Bruce, who gave a shrug and a short laugh. Hal laughed too.

"Holy shit," Dick murmured. _That_ had been who Bruce was with. With Hal. With Hal motherfucking Jordan. And sure, maybe he had left the game and hooked up with someone else who had proceeded to vampirize the hell out of his neck, but something told Dick that wasn't the case. Something told him that wasn't the case at all.

And he had waltzed into the cave tonight and wanted to re-open the conversation about sleeping with team members. Jesus shit, Bruce must have wanted to beat him bloody with the keyboard. _Dangerous_ , Bruce had said. _Get one of you killed. You will make a mistake._

_You're basically just saying, be alone forever._

_Yes_ , Bruce had said. And put his head in his hands. 

If Babs hadn't been asleep he would have yelled an obscenity and hurled his cereal bowl at the exposed brick wall to curse his stupidity. He settled for pouring the remainder of his Wheelios down the drain and tightening his fists to white-knuckled knots, as he stood there gripping the sink.

 _Oh, Bruce_ , he thought. _Holy mother of fuck_.


	4. Chapter 4

Hal bent over the rucked mass of blankets. There was a tousled blond head sticking out, largely indistinguishable from the mountain of covers. Hal slapped it. "Red alert," he said. "Come on, wake up."

The mountain shifted, groaned. "Ow," it croaked. "What the _fuck_."

"Come on, rise and shine. It's ten in the morning, what are you still doing in bed anyway? Come on man, I'm not fucking around, get up, I need your help."

"Ten? In the morning? Who's up at this hour?"

"Non-billionaires, that's who. Up you go," Hal said, ripping back the blankets. Ollie moaned and clutched at the covers Hal tugged from his slack fingers. He sighed and staggered up, aiming a homicidal gaze at Hal.

"You're an asshole," he muttered, on his way to the bathroom.

"And you really ought to consider sleeping with some clothes on. I don't know how Dinah puts up with that shit."

"She doesn't seem to mind a naked man. It is what you might call the essence of our arrangement." He was talking over the sound of his own piss in the bathroom. He was coming back now, pulling boxers off the floor and slipping them on while he yawned. "All right," he sighed, falling back onto the bed with a flop. "What is this red alert of which you speak."

"I have a date."

Ollie cracked an eye. "You are motherfucking pigshitting kidding me."

"You don't have to act like it's that unusual for—"

"You woke me up for a _date?_ Because you have a _date?_ Seriously? Do you know when I got in bed? Like, two hours ago, that's when, you dickwad. God, one of these days I am just going to stick an arrow in your throat and go back to bed."

Hal reached for the cupholder at his feet. "I bring an offering," he said. "Caramel half-fat macchiato, extra whipped cream. The girliest drink I could think of. I know how you like it."

"Give it here," Ollie growled. He downed half of it, and then glared at Hal again, through slightly more human eyes. "Okay. Better. Now do you mind telling me what the hell is going on with you? Since when do you require any handholding about a simple date?"

"It's not," he said. "It's not simple, and it's not technically a date."

"Oho," Ollie said. "Curiouser and curiouser. Okay, clearly I'm going to need my gameface. Wait here."

He downed the rest of the macchiato and got up again, disappearing into the bathroom. Hal heard the shower running. He sat there studying his hands and waiting, and when Ollie came back he was clothed and shaven—or as shaven as Ollie got—and looked like both his eyes were able to focus at the same time, anyway. He sat back down on the bed. "All right," he said. "Tell me about this not-so-simple not-a-date."

"It's got to be good, is the thing. I need ideas. It needs to be. . . impressive."

"Easy peasy. Mariel, it just opened a few weeks ago, and those reservations are the hardest thing to come by on the east coast. Great food, too, sure to impress."

Hal grimaced. "No good."

"Okay, if Continental cuisine's not the thing, then Kuruma or Eleftheria or—"

"Those are all expensive places."

"That's why God made the black card. It's over on the dresser, grab it and go, no worries. What's a wingman for?"

"No, what I mean is, throwing money around is not going to impress, in this instance. Trust me, there's no amount of money I could spend that is going to do me any good here. I need some other ideas."

"Bummer," Ollie said. "Then I got nothing."

"Wait. What? That's how you got women, back in the day? Just took them to fancy restaurants?"

"Um, yeah? Nothing wrong with doing it the old-fashioned way."

"And women used to fall for that."

"Sure they did, except for this one that didn't."

"What'd you do?"

"Married her."

Hal sighed and leaned back in the overstuffed chair. Coming here had been a mistake. Ollie wasn't going to have any answers for him. This was stupid; he was stupid. The whole idea was stupid. "Hey," Ollie said. "Don't give up. We'll figure out something good."

"No," Hal said dully. "We won't." He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. "I don't know," he said, muffled behind his hands. "I don't know what to do here. I don't know what's happening to me."

"Whoa," Ollie said. "This sounds serious."

Hal gave a grim laugh. "Not in the way that you mean. It's not like. . . it's not like I'm going to get laid at the end of tonight, let's put it that way. The odds are, we're never going to. But that's okay, I don't even mind about that. I just want to. . . have you ever just wanted to be in someone's physical presence so much that you would give anything to. . . that it didn't matter what you had to do in order to. . . oh fuck it, forget it. Just forget it."

He put his hands down to discover Ollie's grave eyes on him. "What's the matter with me," he said.

"You really want me to tell you?"

"Yes. No. Never mind. Ollie, I have come to a realization. I have Issues."

"You don't say."

"I mean like. . . sexual issues."

"Please go on with the surprising revelations, I'm on the edge of my seat here."

"Oh, fuck off," Hal said sourly. "Just tell me what to do here."

"Well, as far as the Issues go, I can't help you there. But I think I can help you with the not-a-date thing. Sounds like you don't want to impress this woman, you want to let her in. Let her see a little bit of who you really are."

Hal ducked his head at the pronoun, at Ollie's perfectly natural assumption. Jesus Christ, but he was a piece of shit. Here was his best friend, conscientiously not murdering him, doing his best to help him out, offering him his motherfucking black card for Christ's sake, and Hal couldn't quite make himself have The Conversation with him. Couldn't so much as get the words out his mouth, not because he had avoided them, but because it had been kind of a non-issue in his life so far. Guys were for sex, women were for dating. Easy, explicable categories. 

"Right," he said, instead of the thousand things he should have said. 

"Okay then. So the thing is, you need to go someplace special to you. Someplace Hal would go to have fun. The less expensive or fancy the better. Someplace you can just hang out, where you can be yourself."

"Okay," Hal said. "Okay." He shoved himself up from the chair and paced a little. "Keep it coming, this is good stuff. I can work with this."

"Impressing someone is for getting laid. Sounds like you're at a whole other level here, and impressing isn't what you want to do. So you need to work the other end of the spectrum here."

"Other end of the spectrum," Hal said. "Got it."

"Is there a place you go where you've never taken anyone else, for instance? A place that would show her a little bit of the Hal that is not the Hal she expects to see, maybe."

"Okay, I like it, I get it."

"This should not be construed as a suggestion to take her to Dave and Buster's," Ollie added. "Or go back to your place and watch RedTube."

"Hey," Hal protested. "I'm a classier guy than that. Pay-per-view porn only, for a date."

"The last true gentleman."

Hal braced himself on the window frame. The day was already too bright by half out there, but the blinds were still drawn in here, and the light dimmed. "Hey," Ollie said, his voice gentler. "You gonna be okay?"

"No," Hal said. "Nope, I think 'okay' is several miles behind me. Hey Ol."

"Yeah."

"You know how I said what's the matter with me, and you said, do you really want me to tell you?"

"Yeah."

"I think I may know what the problem is. I think. . . I think I may be. . . Jesus, what the fuck do I do, I think there is a better than even possibility I am. . . that I'm in. . . in. . ."

"Love, is the word you're looking for, you idiot."

" _Fuck_." He collapsed back on the chair. "What the—" He pulled a pair of lacy underwear from underneath one of the throw pillows. "Honestly," he said, flicking it at Ollie. "Other people don't need to see your perversions, you sicko."

"Other people don't need to be in my bedroom. Besides, those aren't even my size, diptard, mine are second drawer from the left."

"More than I needed to know."

"Hal. Seriously. You're gonna survive this. It's gonna be okay."

There was something bracing about Ollie's matter-of-factness, the way he was taking the whole thing in stride. Almost it made him think he could tell him more, almost it made him think it might be okay to. . . but no. He pushed the thought away.

"Thanks, man. Thanks for. . . for listening. Anyway. I'm getting some ideas here, and I might call you later to vet a couple of them, see what you think."

"Sure. I got nothing much to do, I can ride your wing all day."

"You're the best, Ol."

"Tel me something I don't know. Hey Hal."

"Yeah."

"It _is_ gonna be okay."

He gave Ollie a rueful smile, because Ollie had been helpful—he had been more than helpful, he had been great. The last thing he deserved to hear was the truth, which was that nothing about this was okay, or going to be even in the remote vicinity of okay, maybe ever again. "Yeah," was all he said. "Sure."

* * *

Hal stood and watched the clean clear arc of Bruce's slice. "Not bad," he said in approval. Bruce shouldered his club.

"What do you mean, not bad. That was flawless, actually, as well as ten yards beyond yours."

"Ah, stick a club in it. I wasn't even trying before, I just didn't want you to feel bad. Stand back." 

He teed his ball and swung his club a couple of times, assessing distance versus loft versus wind pattern. The driver connected with a satisfying thock that sent his ball soaring. It was a bit hard to see where it landed compared to Bruce's—the driving range was a mess of balls at the other end, this not being the sort of fancy place that sent minions out to clear the range every few hours—but he was pretty sure he had just taken Bruce to school, so that was good enough. "Take that," he said. 

"You pulled up," Bruce said.

"What? What are you talking about, I did not. That swing was perfection."

"Your conformation is a mess."

"Yeah, well, not all of us took golf lessons with Winthrop Worthington Douchenozzle, excuse the hell out of me. You wanna know what's so goddamn irritating about you?" He pointed his club at Bruce. "At no point can I say, put your money where your mouth is, because you'll just bet me under the table."

Bruce was leaning against the chain link fence, hands resting on his driver, smirking at him. Actually smirking at him, the little shit. There was no one else on the range at this hour of the night, and in truth there was hardly anyone here, even in daylight hours. It was a gone-to-seed, out-of-the-way place off the turnpike that Hal had discovered by chance a few years ago, but there were some days when a five-dollar bucket of balls and an empty range in front of you were all you needed to work out the kinks and forget, for a few blessed minutes, the weight of the universe beyond, and all its expectations. Besides, this was the sort of place you didn't even need your own clubs—for an extra three bucks you could rent a battered driver, and for an extra buck-fifty, a mangled five-iron. The balls themselves were barely white anymore, they were so chipped and beaten, but Hal didn't care, it added to the ambiance of the flickering yellow floodlights and the patchy turf.

"Well," Bruce was saying, "a bet is really about proving moral rather than financial superiority. For instance, I might have twenty bucks that says there's no way your shot clears the yellow marker, not with that stance."

"And if I had twenty-five that told you to shove it?"

"Then we'd have ourselves a game, I'd say."

"All right, prepare to get your ass handed to you." He took even more careful aim this time, and he felt the truth of the slice all the way down his spine when the club connected. His ball went sailing, and landed at least a yard beyond the marker. "Hah," he said, but Bruce was squinting down the range. 

"It's rolling," he said.

"What are you talking about, that range is flat as Aquaman's abs."

"It would be, if you didn't have a tendency to spin. It's because you're pulling up." The ball was indeed rolling, and Hal watched in indignation as it nudged closer to the yellow marker. Still comfortably the other side of it, though, so Hal smirked back. 

"Tendency to spin, my ass. Pay up."

"My secretary will be in touch with yours. Does Arthur know about your fixation with his abs?"

"Everyone has a fixation on Arthur's abs. A swimmer's body, man, it can't be beat." 

Bruce gave him a side glance as he teed up his next shot, but refrained from comment. _His body's got nothing on yours, are you fucking kidding me_ , Hal wanted to say, watching Bruce peel off his jacket to give himself more room in his swing. But that was not something he could say; that would have been too close to dangerous territory, and would have reminded him of what it had felt like to have that body up against his. There was a warmth in his cock at the memory of it, and he quickly suppressed it. That was not what they were doing here. He had told Bruce this was enough. He could do this, he could.

Bruce's body torqued effortlessly, a beautiful controlled line of swing from ass to biceps, and all Hal could think was what that particular motion would look like as he flipped him facedown on a mattress. Hal all but glared at his cock in an effort to subdue it. Bruce was turning to him now. "You and golf," he mused. "I admit I did not see that coming."

There was something in his face, his voice, that told Hal he knew where Hal's mind had been. _You know I want to grab your beautiful arms and throw you to the ground and kiss you until you can't breathe and grind on your perfect body until we both come_ , was what he wanted to say, and Bruce's eyes said _you know I want that too, but we can't, and we won't_ , just like they had said it on the subway platform. _I can't do this, I can't take it, I can't_ , he wanted to shout, but he had promised Bruce, he had made him a promise.

"Yeah," he said around a suddenly dry throat. He swallowed. "Yeah," he said again, reaching to tee up a ball. "So me and my buddy Ryan, junior year in high school we get a job at the country club, manning the driving range there. I mean, shitty little club by your standards, but it looked like the Taj Mahal to us. So when there was nothing to do we would get out there and hit a few balls, and we taught ourselves. The money was pretty good, too, if you threw in tips from caddying. Those country club golfing ladies, that was where the real money was, if you knew how to work it."

His shot sailed even further than the last one, and for a minute as he watched it, he was thinking about all that real money. The first few times had just been in the back of the golf shack storage room, and they had ridden his thick young indefatigable cock with groans of joy they had muffled in their monogrammed towels. Buck hadn't known anything about that money, and he had been careful Buck didn't find out; the beating would have been a bad one, not because Hal was whoring, but because he wasn't cutting Buck in. 

He turned from the tee to find Bruce's eyes on him, and realized that a) he had been standing there lost in thought for too long, b) Bruce's eyes were sharp ones, and c) that last thing he had said had been too revealing. He flushed and tossed an extra tee at Bruce, just to have something to do with his hands. "Come on, country club boy, show me what you got," he said, settling back to watch.

"I wasn't, actually," Bruce said, sending his slice to the left this time. "I guess my parents had been members, but I didn't ever go. Well, I take it back, I went once. I must have been ten or so, and Alfred tried to interest me in joining the club's swim team—one of his periodic attempts to make sure I had friends, I suppose. It was excruciating. I told him I would go to one practice, and that was enough for me."

"Did the other little douchenozzles not like you, or something?"

"Not much. Hard to blame them."

"A charmer even at ten, huh?"

"Something like that."

Hal laughed, imagining tiny grim-faced little Bruce, like some male Wednesday Addams, glaring at all the other little Aryan spawnlets with murder in his eyes. They settled into an easy rhythm, watching each other take swings, making desultory comments, relaxing under the buzz of the weirdly glowing lights. "Hey," he said after a while. "You ever take any of the Robins to the Gotham Country Club?"

"Once," Bruce replied shortly. 

"Let me guess, Damian decapitated some topiaries, and that was the end of that?"

"No, it was Dick, actually. Years ago."

"Dick decapitated the topiaries?"

"No, he didn't do anything like that. But he was asked not to come back."

"You're kidding? What did he do?"

Bruce leaned back against the chain link and watched Hal take a few swings. For a minute Hal thought he wasn't going to answer. "It was right after Dick came to stay with me," he said. "And I was still trying to figure out what to do with him. So I took him to the club, figured he would have a good time running around. He liked the water, liked to swim, and when he saw the pool there he was dying to go run and jump in it, so I sent him off to the pool and I went to the bar for a bit, figuring I could have a drink and then come down and join him. Thought the freedom would do him good, and at the club, it wasn't like any harm was going to come to him." 

"Oh no," Hal said, because he could see where this story was going.

"Things have changed in Gotham in the last twenty years," he said. "Mostly for the better. But at the club, the old guard was still very much in place when Dick was little, and the old ways of doing things. They didn't know who he was, didn't know he was connected with me. When he was younger, he looked even darker than he does now, much more Roma."

"Jesus," Hal sighed. "What happened?"

"The predictable happened. One of the management was summoned, by some officious bitch at the poolside, and Dick was pulled from the water. He kept telling them he was with me, but they didn't believe him, of course, until I had been summoned from the bar where I was swilling down scotch like an asshole. He didn't understand what had happened, didn't have any framework for it. They were very apologetic, very _Mr. Wayne we had no idea, we do beg your pardon_. But they suggested he should be accompanied at all times in the future. Supervised, was the word they used."

"Christ Almighty. What did you do?"

Bruce winced. "I was young myself, barely twenty-five. Too young to have a kid to look after, with no experience. I was still learning how to control my temper, how to fuel my rage into Batman."

"You hit him?"

"I did."

"I hope Dick saw."

"He did. Unfortunately. Along with all the other club members. I took my anger out on a low-level functionary who was just hired to do the bidding of the membership board, and I shouldn't have done it."

"But it felt good."

"It did at that."

Hal laughed, remembering Bruce decking Guy in one flat punch. Twenty-five-year-old Bruce, fueled by righteous anger—that would have been a thing to see. "Yeah, hitting things is kind of awesome," he said. "That's why I like golf, though. I'm hitting things on a regular basis, I have no desire to unwind in a gym by punching some bag and hitting things even more."

"My only point was, I didn't learn at a country club either. It's not as though Alfred would have had success, dragging me to golf lessons."

"Where did you learn, then?"

"In college."

"And by college you mean Princeton." He knocked a drive straight down the center of the range, a thing of beauty. "Look at that, will you. Beat that with a stick."

"I'll beat it with a seven-iron."

"Hey, speaking of Dick, are they back yet?"

"Got back day before yesterday."

"Seriously? Kind of a short honeymoon. See, you got nothing to worry about, maybe they'll be divorced before the year's out."

Bruce snorted and lined up his drive. "That's not a bet I'd take."

"Hey, maybe they came back because she's pregnant."

"You have next to no idea how the human body works, do you? They just got married a week ago."

"Ahhh. . . pretty sure you have next to no idea how horny young people work. You seriously think last week was the first time they had sex? Hey, maybe that was why they got married in the first place, because she was pregnant."

Bruce duffed the shot, sending it skidding into the weeds and stagnant puddles. He glared at Hal, who was grinning. "Not funny," he said.

"Why does it bother you so much? So what if she is? I think it'd be awesome, little baby Batlets running around, tugging on Grampa Bats. Hey, maybe she'll have twins, any idea if twins run in her family?"

Bruce's glare was interrupted by the gunning of a car engine, as a sleek red Lotus pulled into the deserted parking lot. "Oh no," Hal said. "I don't believe it."

They watched as Oliver emerged, grinning at them and waving jauntily. He headed straight for them, not the rental shack opposite the parking lot, and his grin just kept getting wider. "Oh Jesus," Hal murmured. "Please shoot me now."

"What the hell happened?" Oliver boomed, when he climbed the rise of ground next to the tee. "Hal, you just give up answering your phone?"

"I was busy," Hal said. "Ol, what are you—"

"I was trying to find out how your date went," he said. "But you didn't answer your goddamn phone. So I asked myself, where does Hal go when he wants to sulk, and I ended up here. Come on, it can't have gone _that_ bad. Hey Bruce, what's up?"

"Nothing much. How are you, Oliver?"

"Can't complain. Unlike Hal here, who I guess got ditched earlier tonight. Come on man, she can't have left you already?"

Bruce was looking at Hal curiously, and he fought the flush rising on his face. "No," he said. "That—it wasn't—"

"So at like the crack of dawn this morning, Hal here wakes me out of a sound sleep," Ollie was saying to Bruce. "Pours coffee down my throat and starts moaning about his love life."

"Oliver," Hal said, his lips going numb.

"Oh, Ollie, what do I _do_ , I don't understand all these _feelings_ I'm having, tell me what to _do_."

"Oliver," he tried again, his voice fainter. Bruce was looking more interested by the minute. 

Ollie's grin was wide and friendly. He clapped Hal on the back. "Oh relax," he said. "Bruce doesn't care about your sad love life. But seriously man, you should have heard him this morning. Needed an idea for a date tonight. Never seen anyone quite that desperate. He's pissing and moaning all over my bedroom like a Labrador in heat, he's going on and on, you've never heard anything so sad."

Hal studied the ground, tightening his knuckles on his club to keep himself from beating Oliver bloody with it. "Is that so," Bruce said politely.

"Oh, completely. I think there's a possibility I'm in _love_ , he tells me, and now here he is not twelve hours later, looking like the whole thing never happened. So come on, spill. How did the date go?"

The silence was like no silence he had yet lived through. There was Oliver's expectant face, still grinning. And there was Bruce beside him, face quite intent on Hal's. He shut his eyes, just briefly. His life was a nightmare from which he would shortly emerge. 

"I'll let you know," he said. "When it's over."

The silence continued, only now there was Ollie's slightly confused face, looking from him to Bruce and back again. "Over," he said. "But there's nobody. . ."

There were only their faces, looking back at him. He looked at Hal. Hal looked at him, raising his eyebrows. Ollie looked back at him. 

"Oh," Ollie said. And then—improbably enough, given his learning curve on this one, but even Ollie would clue in eventually—then it actually did hit him. " _Oh_ ," he said again. "Oh. Oh. _OH_. Oh my God."

"Good night," Hal said, firmly.

"Oh holy shit. Hal, I didn't mean—oh _fuck_."

"You're leaving now," Hal said.

"Yes, I am, I'm leaving now, I am—I am so outa here it's like I was never here, I swear it." He began to beat a retreat back to the car, and then he stopped, doubled back. "Listen," he said. "You gotta not tell Dinah I did this. I'm serious, man, she'll kill me. You gotta not tell her."

"Let me get this straight," said Hal. "You're asking me to make sure _your_ love life doesn't get fucked all to hell?" 

"That. . . okay, not the best time, huh. We can talk about it later. I'm so sorry, man, I really am, I—"

"Get. In. The car," Hal said, through gritted teeth, and shut his eyes again. When he opened them the Lotus was speeding away in a cloud of dirt and gravel. He climbed back up to the tee, where Bruce was—

He stared incredulously. "Are you _laughing?_ "

Bruce was leaning against the fence, making the oddest sound. Not a full-throated belly laugh, just a quiet low chuckle. "You're laughing," Hal said. "I don't believe this."

"You have to admit," Bruce said. "It's pretty amusing."

"It is not pretty _amusing_. You're saying it's _amusing_ because it's not _you_."

"Exactly."

"I'm gonna ask a tough question here. Do you get some kind of sick pleasure out of seeing me humiliated?"

"Yes," he said, and he was actually laughing harder, the asshole. It was just. . . he was so damn beautiful. He had seen Bruce laugh like this maybe once before, low and deep and real, and that had also been at his expense, when he had been touching Diana's lasso that time. 

"Poor Oliver," Bruce was saying. "I do see your point, but you have to admit—poor Oliver."

Hal leaned against the fence too, thunking his head against the chain link. "Yeah," he sighed. "Still gonna kill him, though."

He watched Bruce's face, the lines of his laughter still softening it. Bruce turned his head to look at him, and Hal sighed again. "I told him 'date' because I didn't know how else to put it, that he would understand," Hal said. "I didn't mean I had in mind that we would. . . I didn't intend for. . ."

"I know," Bruce said. 

And then as they leaned against the fence together, there was a hand that clasped his—large and firm and warm. Bruce's eyes were as warm as his hand. Hal clasped back. "I don't know that I can do this," he said softly. Bruce gripped him harder. 

"Me either," he said. 

Hal shut his eyes again, but this time it wasn't to shut anything out, but so that he could better feel Bruce's hand in his. Their fingers moved against each other. He didn't remember just holding hands with someone like this, and if he had, he didn't remember that it was this erotic. "God this feels good," he whispered.

"Yes," Bruce said.

He wondered if he could come, just from this. If they stayed leaning against the fence like this, and Bruce's hand tightened on his, if his thumb began rubbing him, after a while would his cock get harder, would his balls ache, would his cock eventually just start dripping cum? It felt like maybe it would. He was definitely getting hard. He wondered if that darkening of Bruce's eyes meant he was too. 

"Dangerous," Hal said, his throat tight around the word.


	5. Chapter 5

He went back to his apartment and resolutely refused to jack off. It was more a matter of principle and self-respect than anything else, which wasn't to say that he didn't enjoy a good daily wank or four. His sex drive was on the high end of normal, and jack-off sessions were a frequent and regular part of his life, a part he thoroughly enjoyed. But he wasn't going to be the guy who came home from a date—or whatever the hell that had been—and pulled out his cock for a quick rub. 

He was absolutely not going to be that pathetic. He was absolutely not going to lie on his sofa and cup the aching bulge in his jeans while moaning someone's name. He was not going to imagine Bruce's big hand feeling him up. He was not going to—

"Fuck," he muttered. 

Bruce jacking off. Bruce jacking off right now, because he wanted to fuck Hal. What would that look like? Was Bruce an in-the-shower kind of guy? He'd never been much for the shower, himself. Call it a personal preference. Would Bruce stretch out on the bed, take himself in hand, maybe dig his heel into the bed and arch once it got really good? Would he make any noise? Would he—

"Fuck!" he said, more loudly. 

This was fucking ridiculous. They were fucking ridiculous. Two grown-ass men who just wanted to fuck, but no, for whatever reason torturing themselves was what thy had decided to do. Scratch that. What _Bruce_ had decided to do. This ended tonight. Whatever fucked-up ideas were in Bruce's head, tonight was the end of them. He was going to get in his car right now and drive out to Wayne Manor and pound on Bruce's front door and—

He startled at the knock on his door. Oliver, it was going to be Oliver of course, because he hadn't answered any of Ollie's frantic and increasingly supplicatory texts, so of course Ollie was doing that thing he did where he refused to let you ignore him no matter how clear you made it that you _wanted_ to be ignoring him, and he just wouldn't—

"For fuck's sake," he said, yanking open the door, only it wasn't Ollie on his doorstep. He stood there in what probably looked like stony silence, he was so surprised.

"Can I come in," Bruce said. 

"Sure—yeah," Hal said. "Are you—is everything okay?"

Bruce didn't answer, but came inside and stood in the little front hallway of Hal's apartment, looking around like he hadn't seen it before, which come to think of it he hadn't. His face looked drawn and grim.

"Bruce," Hal said, and he let himself touch the other man's arm. "Hey. What happened. Are you all right? Is Dick—"

"I told you," he said harshly. "I told you it was not your self-control I was worried about." 

"Okay," Hal said warily. Bruce seemed angry with him, for no reason he could think of.

"Why couldn't you leave me alone?" 

"You could've said no," Hal pointed out. "I invited you to a game, and if you didn't want to go, the thing to say was no thank you. End of conversation. If this is where I'm supposed to be apologizing for something, stick it up your ass."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Oh, okay sure, I'm being ridiculous. That's why you're standing in my apartment looking like you're about to punch me in the face for giving you a boner."

"Is that what I look like I'm about to do." 

" _Your_ idea," Hal said, and now he was the one who was angry. "This was _your_ idea, this whole _we can't_ bullshit, so don't you come here now and lay this on me, because I have done nothing but respect whatever shit-for-brains boundary you want to keep between us, no matter how brain-dead ass-fucked stupid I think it is, but whatever, I was willing to roll with it, and sure, living in a permanent state of blue balls sounds like fun to me, why don't we just do that for the rest of our fucking lives instead of what normal people do, which is—"

He had always known Bruce could move faster than he could, for all that the man had twenty pounds of muscle on Hal. His back had hit the wall before he had known he was moving, and Bruce was pressed against him, pinning him. Hal didn't need to read the rest of the invitation. He grabbed Bruce's mouth in his, dug his fingers into Bruce—his shoulders, but then his ass, and pressed back just as hard. It was more biting than kissing, and they were neither of them gentle. 

"We get it out of our system," Bruce was saying, low and into his neck. "We do this once, it doesn't have to happen again, and then we can forget about it."

"Oh okay," Hal said, struggling for breath. "I see. A new plan. By the way this one sucks as much as the last one, in case you were wondering. But hell if I'm going to point that out. God, come here, why do you feel so good."

They were back to more of the biting/kissing, all but clawing at each other—or maybe that was Hal, maybe he was being too rough, maybe he needed to pull it back a bit. But Bruce seemed right there with him. Bruce still had him against the wall, and their mouths were going to be bruised and sore at this rate, this was like the kind of kissing your high school guidance counselor warned you about. Bruce had his hands on Hal's wrists now, and he pressed them into the wall, and Hal couldn't move, and—

"No," he gasped. Bruce released him instantly, stepped back like he had been tased, but not before he had felt Hal's convulsive panicky shudder, the twist of his whole body in protest. Bruce's hands were raised, palm up, his face nothing but intent on Hal's. 

"It's fine," Hal said, his throat dry. "I just don't—like that."

Bruce hadn't moved, though, and Hal realized he wasn't going to. He was going to wait for Hal. He was just watching Hal. "You know how it is," Hal said. "Bad bondage flashbacks."

Bruce was still silent, and he looked undeceived by the quip. Hal swallowed. "Please just kiss me again."

Bruce made a small noise, and his arms were back around Hal, but looser this time. And maybe he was a little more watchful. Their kisses were less brutal now, more like they had been on the station platform. He gripped Bruce's waist and maneuvered them so they were out from the wall, hips notched against each other, and that was better. He could feel how hard Bruce was through his jeans. 

"Are you hard for me," he whispered.

"Yes," Bruce whispered back.

"Can you feel how hard I am?"

"Yes." 

He groaned. "God, you feel good." He could stand here making out with Bruce all night. He got his fingers around that ass that felt like it was made of rock and used it to push him in harder, rubbing them bulge against bulge.

"Hey Bruce."

Bruce made another incoherent noise and moved to his jaw, down his neck. God, Bruce's mouth on his neck, how had he not known this was a thing he needed in his life. "Bruce, did you jack off when you got home?"

Bruce's mouth lifted. "No."

"Okay good."

"Why?"

"Because neither did I, and I don't know about you, but I'm totally good for more than one tour of the park, it's just—this first one is gonna be really goddamn fast. I am pretty close to—ah fuck—losing it here."

"Good," Bruce murmured. Somehow Hal got them maneuvered more or less in the direction of the bedroom. Sofa was closer, but here was where all those Academy physics classes were coming in handy, because two guys their size were not going to be able to get comfortable on that sofa. And to be honest, part of him wanted to see what Bruce would be like, unleashed on a bed.

He did not disappoint. The trip to the bedroom was not easy, because Bruce never really lifted his mouth off Hal, or his hands for that matter, so Hal was stumbling backward with some sort of ferocious six-foot succubus attached to his neck, and every time he tried to turn his head to make sure they weren't going to concuss against a wall, Bruce made a sound—he could swear it was almost a _growl_ —and pulled Hal's face back to his. Bruce was a little possessive as a lover (who could have seen that one coming) but _jealous of a wall_ was a whole new level.

"Okay, we're,—okay babe, I've got you, just—ow—watch out for—" With a creak of the protesting mattress they landed on it, hard. Which was to say Bruce landed on him hard, and then they were going at it again, Bruce not even missing a beat, until he did. He stopped—froze really—and lifted his head.

"This okay?" he said, quietly.

"Yeah," Hal said. "It is all kinds of okay."

Bruce hesitated, and looked like he wanted to say more. Maybe he was worried Hal thought he meant the whole situation, which was obviously _not_ all kinds of okay—it was fucked up beyond all reason, was what it was. But he knew Bruce had meant the position, with him pinning Hal underneath him like this. He didn't have the time and energy to explain why bed was okay, wall was not, so he just yanked Bruce's mouth back to his and concentrated on kissing it the way it was meant to be kissed. 

Bruce had started this slow grind that had the bulge of his cock right up against the bulge of Hal's. "Oh Jesus," Hal gasped.

"Yeah," Bruce groaned.

"Oh Jesus you're gonna make me come."

"Yeah," Bruce said again, but this time it was more of a grunt, deeper in his throat. He was close too. They hadn't taken off any clothes, which was maybe the most fucked up thing about all of this. 

"Just fucking grind me, come on."

Bruce's grunt this time didn't even try for vowels, much less consonants. He could feel the hot hard weight of Bruce's cock, the delicious weight of him pressing against Hal's body, and Christ, he hadn't been this hot for it since he was a teenager. "Oh God," he keened, his neck arching back, and Bruce's grunt was louder, they were totally going to come right here, right now, in their pants like thirteen-year-olds. "Wait," he gasped.

"Can't—can't," Bruce panted, his hips still moving.

" _Wait_ ," Hal said again. "I know what I want."

Bruce was flushed, open-mouthed, obviously an inch from coming, but he stopped. "What," he managed.

"I want to come."

Bruce looked at him like he had suffered brain damage, which would have been more impressive had Bruce's eyes been able to focus. Hal tried again. "But I want—will you wait and let me come first? Because I want—I want to see you. Watch you. When you come. Can you—I just—"

It made no sense. It was probably completely incoherent. Even coherent, it was a jackass thing to ask for. In answer Bruce's body bent back over his and kissed him again, in a brain-wiping kiss and a tongue that traveled at least down to his trachea. And then he kept humping him, just like that. Something about the shift in angle wrenched a cry from Hal. "Oh Jesus yes," he panted. "Oh God that's—oh fuck—"

Bruce was grinding him fast and hard, and Hal got his hands around Bruce's ass, pulling it in, around Bruce's beautiful body, and then—

"Co—coming— _fuuuck_ —" His cock was coated in wet, the spasms jerking him under Bruce's body. It went on for days, for weeks. His neck was going to snap off, he was bending it back so hard, his mouth panting for air. He was writhing against Bruce's body, fucking blitzed with it. His cock just kept coming, and it didn't feel like it was stopping. Another spasm curled his spine, shot out his aching balls and into his sticky shorts, and Bruce's face against his neck was moaning softly. "Hal," he said. "I—God—"

He felt the shudders in Bruce's body, shaking him, shaking the whole bed. It was a groan the neighbors could definitely hear, way louder than he had thought it would be (he had somehow got it in his head that Bruce would be really quiet in bed) and way louder than Mindy in 4C probably wanted it to be. 

"Sorry," Bruce was groaning into his neck, and then he realized Bruce had just come, had just come sooner than he had planned, because of him. Because of _him_. Bruce had lost control, because of him. He managed a loopy grin—a little difficult, what with the remains of the neural lightning storm still shivering his body. 

"'S all good," he said. "I just thought it would be cool to watch. I'll get myself a front-row seat, next round."

Bruce gave another groan at that, and Hal felt the aftershocks ripple up his back. He ran a soothing hand up that broad, beautiful back. He could feel the scratch of his shirt. "That is, if you're up for another round, old man," he said, and felt Bruce's snort at that.

"Just. . . four years. . . younger," Bruce murmured, and look at that, it took a while for Bruce's brain to come back online after coming, that was useful information to have. He was still collapsed on Hal, which was not nearly as sexy as it had been five minutes ago. 

"Oof," he grunted. "Get the fuck off, you're built like a brick shithouse." But when Bruce slid off he didn't let him go too far. Their arms were still looped around each other, and most of their bodies. Bruce's face was close to his, and they were just watching each other.

"You're one to talk," Bruce said, his voice still that slightly slurred murmur, which was maybe the most beautiful sound Hal had ever heard, and oh shit, the things happening in his chest right now, the world of shit he was in.

"Let's get these clothes off," Hal said brusquely. "Come on, we're gross."

"Mm," Bruce said, his eyes fluttering shut. 

"Come on," Hal said, brushing a kiss on Bruce's face, his eyelids. "You'll regret it in a few hours, trust me." He struggled to tug off his shirt and extricate himself from his pants before the mess in them concretized, and he wiped himself as best he could. He had just come a shit-ton more than he had thought; it was everywhere. He wondered if Bruce's pants looked the same. He twisted around to find Bruce's eyes on him, suddenly very alert. 

"Waking up for the undressing part, I see," he said. 

"Yes." 

"You just gonna lie there?"

"Mm," he said again.

"Fine," Hal said, and climbed back up on the bed, straddling him. Bruce's slow canary-eating smile was reward enough. There were hands rubbing at his naked thighs. 

"Sorry about. . .before," Bruce said. "I normally have more self-control than that, I promise."

"I have no trouble believing that. No worries, it was hot as hell. Come on, let's get you out of this." He started in on Bruce's shirt, and took his time enjoying the view. Most everyone in the League, he had seen them in various states of undress, in the showers or what have you. But not Bruce. He had always wondered why that was, and just chalked it up to Bruce's general uptightness and overdeveloped sense of privacy, a.k.a. paranoia. But now he wasn't so sure. Bruce's face looked more than a little uncomfortable, as Hal was running his hands over that glorious chest. Hal settled back on his heels.

"You don't like your scars," he said.

A few rapid blinks. "A bit more battered than you, you have to admit."

"Give me a break. Look at you, Jesus Christ." He carefully got him out of his pants, and he wondered if it was okay to stare. Were they staring now? Was that a thing he could do? Because goddamn. God _damn_. He wiped his cock carefully with his own discarded shirt — it was already ruined anyway, and Bruce's was probably actually worth something, no sense in destroying it. 

"Missed a spot," he said, and bent his head to Bruce's softened yet formidable cock, licking a gentle trail up the side of it, tasting the salty residue. Cut, which was a little surprising—in his head he had always thought Bruce might be uncut.

"You always come this much?" he whispered. Bruce shook his head. Bruce's hands were fists beside his thighs, his breathing quickening. 

"So," Hal said conversationally, watching Bruce's cock. "This getting it out of our systems thing. How long you think that's going to take us? Just ballpark it for me, so I can plan my week."

"I might have. . . misspoken."

"Oh, you fucking think. Move over, let's get some blankets, I'm freezing."

"It's July."

"So? I just came half my blood volume, at least." He got them maneuvered under the covers, and then there was Bruce's warm body against his, and those hands running up and down his thighs again, his back, his ass, and Bruce was pulling him in for more kisses. 

"Hey Bruce," he whispered after a while of this sort of aimless making out. 

"Hmm."

"There are some logistical conversations we need to have, about who likes what."

"Mm."

"No fooling, I'm not fucking around. Not that five minutes of dry humping isn't my idea of an awesome time and all, but if you think step two here is me signing up to roll over and be your bitch, there are one or two things we ought to talk about."

Bruce's eyes were grave, and too late Hal heard how hard and angry his voice was—belligerent, almost. _Shit shit shit_ , he thought.

"Do you want me to leave," Bruce said quietly.

"No. I—no, I didn't—fuck," and he bent his head. Bowed it to brush Bruce's forehead. 

"You know more about this than I do," Bruce was whispering. His hand was rubbing at the back of Hal's head. "We'll do what you want us to do. I don't care."

"Ignore me. I'm a massive piece of shit. I just—I'll be honest, in the larger, non-logistical sense, I have no fucking idea what I'm doing here."

Bruce folded him in his arms, and part of him rebelled at that too, but another part of him loved it. He wrapped Bruce too, and then they were making out again, and that was great, that was a thing they were good at. He pushed closer so their groins were rubbing against each other, just gently, but he was definitely feeling that warm spreading sensation again, more diffuse and less sharp this time, he would be hard again before too long.

"We can buy a book, I'm sure that will help," Bruce was murmuring into his hair. 

"This book better have lots of dirty pictures."

"Of course it will have pictures, how else will you be able to read it?"

"Such an asshole," Hal murmured back, and then he was sliding on top of Bruce, and step two was maybe happening a whole lot sooner than he had thought, and that was the most okay thing of this whole fucked-up night.


	6. Chapter 6

Kilowogg was insisting they fly through Thanagarian airspace. That was the only explanation for that pounding, pulsing sound—the weird repulsor fields Thanagar had set up at the edge of their territory. They had a particular rhythmic sound that was bone-deep unpleasant, somehow set at the exact pitch of neural vibration, or something. _Boom, boom, boom_. And then it would pause for a bit, and resume. 

_Boom, boom, boom_.

Wait, that wasn't right. Thanagarian repulsors didn't do that.

He groaned and shoved his head further into the pillow. The pillow mumbled and shoved back at him.

Wait.

"Oh, you're kidding me," he mumbled. The pounding sound had started again. Some asshole was actually pounding on his door at four in the goddamned morning. He squinted at the clock. Okay, eleven-thirty in the goddamned morning, just as bad.

"Stop," he croaked, stumbling up. He reached for something on the floor—were those his boxers?—before he remembered what an awful idea that was, and quickly grabbed something clean from a drawer.

"For fuck's sake," he sighed, and then he realized the pounding had stopped. Thank God. He turned and was about to fall back into bed—and look at that, there was six-feet-two-inches of _Bruce_ in his bed, of sleep-warm sexy hot-as-fuck Bruce in his bed, lying on his stomach with that swell of ass curving the sheet and making Hal wonder if—

"Hal?" The voice had come from _inside his apartment_ , and that had been why the pounding had stopped. Ollie's voice. Because Ollie had his goddamn key, that was why.

"Oh for the love of—" He stumbled out the bedroom door, closing it firmly behind him. Ollie was standing in his living room. Oliver Queen. Staring at him.

"You're here," he said.

"Yes I am. Mind telling me what _you're_ doing here?" He tried to keep his voice down, hoping Ollie would catch the hint, but Ollie was oblivious.

"You didn't answer your phone," he said, as if that explained everything.

Hal scrubbed at his face. "I didn't. . . _what?_ Is this what you do now, when I don't answer my phone, resort to terrorist tactics? What the hell is the _matter_ with you?"

Ollie looked uncomfortable. "I was worried," he said. "I thought. . . I thought you might be upset with me."

For a minute Hal couldn't remember why he would be mad at Ollie. "Oh," he said. "Right. Yeah. Listen Ol, this might not be the best time to—"

"I kept texting you all last night," Ollie said, "and you kept not answering, and I swear to God, all I could think was. . . all I could think was, I'd just fucked up our friendship forever, man, and I couldn't take that, I just couldn't face it. So I. . . I waited as long as I could, and then I thought I would just, you know. . ."

"Break into my house?"

"Leave you a note," Ollie said defensively. 

"Okay," Hal said, crossing his arms. "And what was this note going to say?"

"It was going to say, I am the biggest piece of ignorant shit to ever walk the face of the earth. That was going to be my opening line."

"It's a good one."

"Hal. I am . . . so sorry, man, I really am. I did not mean to fuck things up for you last night. I did not mean to. . . to do that. I just. . . I was just surprised, is all."

"You didn't," he said. "It. . . turned out okay." It was Hal's turn to look at the floor. "I realize there are conversations we never had," he began.

"I didn't mean I was surprised about _that_ ," Ollie said. "Hal, come on, I know what you get up to on the D.L., I'm not _that_ stupid. But I had never put that together in my head with. . . well, with the idea of you actually dating someone, and then that someone being. . . that it might be. . . you know."

"Don't choke on it."

" _Bruce_ , of all people."

"Of all people?"

"I mean, come on man. He's not exactly. . . I mean, for Christ's sake Hal, you've gotta be some kind of masochist to think getting close to Bruce is a good idea. The man has more issues than Newsweek, and sure, he's brilliant as hell, but no one ever said he wasn't a primo asshole, and this is from someone who's known him most all my life." 

"This is where you want to stop talking," Hal said, his voice tight. Throwing down with Ollie right now would go nowhere good, but not five minutes ago he had been wrapped in Bruce's arms, and he was damned if he was going to stand here and listen to someone talk trash about him, even if that someone was his best friend. 

Ollie sat on the sofa, heavily. He put his hands on his knees, shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I fucked up. I know I did. And I'm fucking up again, saying that. But I just—I want to make it right. Make us right. Can we do that?"

"Sure," he said. "We can do that."

"Awesome." The grin spreading across Ollie's face made him forget his irritation of a minute ago. "So here was my thought. We spend today doing whatever it is you want to do, you name it. We can sit in front of the TV and play Grand Theft Auto until Dinah yells at us to get a job, whaddaya say?"

"Um," he said. "Well. Sure. That is. . . "

"Great," Ollie said. "Okay, bonding time, here we go. You can kick us off by sitting down and telling me all about your date. And I promise I will listen this time, for real."

"Right," Hal said. "Well, the thing is—"

"I know I haven't been the most supportive in the past. And if I haven't said anything before, it's because you clearly didn't want to say anything, and that made me think, okay, maybe he doesn't trust me, and then I got mad, and I just got in this whole weird headspace about it, but that's behind me now. Swear to God. So okay. Tell me about the date."

He looked so eager, so relieved that they were okay. Almost Hal hated to do this next part. "The thing is, Ol," he said. "It's not. . . technically. . . over. Yet."

Ollie just kept blinking at him, like maybe this was going to go someplace more complicated, possibly even metaphorical, but that was okay, he could stay with it. He was even nodding. Hal just kept looking at him, and then there was the painful moment when he saw Ollie register that Hal was standing there, in his boxers, and the bedroom door was firmly closed. 

All the color in Ollie's face drained out. He looked at the bedroom door. "Oh Jesus," he said.

"It's, it's okay, you just need to—"

"Oh Jesus!" he exclaimed, leaping off the sofa like it had burned him. "Oh _shit_ , are you motherfucking _kidding_ me? Why did you let me—aw, Jesus Christ, man!" And he was bending over, clutching his head, like he was maybe having an attack of some sort, and the only thing that could make it worse was—yes, there it was, right on cue.

Bruce shuffled out, yawning and scratching at his head. "I don't suppose there's any way you two could be quieter," he said, with a squinting directionless scowl. He headed to the kitchen, where they watched him rummage for a glass, then open the fridge, search for something, and pull out a liter of OJ. He drank down a whole glass, then set it on the counter and turned back to the two of them in the living room. They were watching him in dumbfounded silence.

"Good morning Oliver," Bruce said, in a slightly more human voice. "Good to see you, again." There was a bit of emphasis on that _again_ , and it was enough to shake Ollie loose from his stupor.

"I'll just—you know what—I can just—okay, I'm gonna—I'll do the—with the—" His retreat was covered by more verbal stutters than Hal had yet heard from a grown man, and Hal sighed as Ollie shut the door behind him, not before fumbling several more times with the knob. He waited a second to compose himself before turning to Bruce.

"Was that strictly necessary?" he asked.

"I needed orange juice. Is that a problem?"

"No," Hal said. "It's not. But do you think that next time, you might possibly consider _putting on clothes first?"_

Bruce looked thoughtful. "It got the job done," he said.

"Yes. Yes it did."

"I was thinking," Bruce said, like this was something they did, just stood around and conversed while he was _totally goddamn starkers_ in Hal's kitchen, just balls to the breeze and naked as the day he was born, and impressive a piece of work as Bruce was lying down, he hadn't yet seen him fully assembled and upright, so to speak, and he was having a bit of a time keeping his eyes on Bruce's face. 

"Thinking about what?"

There was a little smirk in the corner of Bruce's mouth like he was aware of where Hal's mind was. "I was thinking we might go somewhere," he said. 

"Like back to bed?"

"In a minute. But I mean in the larger sense."

"Logistical or non-logistical?"

Bruce gave a small smile at that, and Hal had a flash of remembering last night—or no, that was probably this morning, wasn't it—and stretching out over top of Bruce, sinking slowly into him while Bruce gasped and clawed at the sheets and made noises he did not know Bruce was capable of making. Anytime he needed to retire, he was pretty sure he could call up CNN and say, _let me tell you guys about the time I fucked Batman._

"Both," Bruce said. "I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but I have an island."

"An island," Hal repeated.

"Not a large one."

"Oh, okay then."

"And depending on our schedules, I think it might be wise if we cleared a little bit of time and went there. Together."

"Okay I see. This wouldn't happen to be more of the 'working it out of our systems' plan, would it?"

"Possibly. Any objection?"

"To smoking hot sex on a private island with an A-number one BILF?"

Bruce looked puzzled. "Bat I'd Like to Fuck," Hal clarified.

Bruce winced. "This will go better if you talk less."

"You didn't seem to mind my talking last night."

"You were nakeder last night."

Hal stripped off his boxers, tossed them at the sink. "Better?"

Bruce poured more orange juice. He was unabashedly looking Hal over, a coolly assessing gaze. "Much," he said. "Your thoughts?"

"I'm torn," he said. "On the one hand, I can point out to you all the reasons this is a really stupid idea, with four-part harmony plus orchestration. But then I might be screwing myself out of, like I said, smoking hot sex on a private island with my very own personal Batbang. So I'm inclined to say sure, whatever, I'm in."

"Excellent," Bruce said, and finished off his orange juice. "I'll make the arrangements."

* * *

Dinah struggled through the door juggling her briefcase and the eleven sacks of groceries, and aimed a scowl at the figure collapsed on the chair in the living room, staring at the ceiling. "I texted you," she said testily, marching past him on the way to the kitchen.

"Sorry," he mumbled. He was still staring at the ceiling. She put down the groceries in the kitchen, threw her briefcase beside the bed—lots of case files to review tonight—and marched back into the living room, where he was still staring at the ceiling. She sighed.

"I told you," she said, "you're not going to feel better until you talk to Hal. Lying around here in a funk isn't going to help anything."

"Go talk to him," Ollie said, still staring at the ceiling. "Why didn't I think of that."

"All right, walk it back there, and don't take out your irritation on me. I'm serious. The two of you always communicate better in person anyway. Stop trying to chase him down with texts and just go over there like a grown-up and apologize so you can move on with your life."

"Oh, I did," he said. 

"Oh," she said.

"Yep, that was solid advice. Thank God I live with a professional."

"Well. . . it can't have been that bad. That doesn't sound like Hal, not to forgive you. It was an honest mistake."

"Oh, he forgave me all right."

"Oh," she said again. "Then what's the problem?"

He turned his head and looked at her. "Well, let's see," he drawled. "Let's start with, I get over there and he doesn't answer the door. By this point I've convinced myself that he is in there and just deliberately ignoring me, and if he's not then I can just let myself in and leave him a heartfelt and eloquent note. Right?"

She was frowning slightly. "Okay."

"Only as it turns out Hal had been there, he had just been in bed."

"You woke him up?"

"Well, I don't actually know about that, but we'll return to that in a bit. So I start in on my whole song-and-dance, the _I'm so sorry I'm such a shitbag_ thing, and he's pretty much over it, he's all, _don't even worry about it._ "

"Oh," she said in some surprise. "Well, that's great."

"Yep. So then I start explaining how and why I was so unprepared for the idea of it being _Bruce_ he was on a date with —and help me out here, you see that too, I can't be the only one who thinks this is like watching two nuclear submarines on a collision course—so I start in on that, and he shuts me down fast. In fact, the whole conversation, I have to say he's acting kind of weird, like something's making him nervous."

"Oh no," she said. 

"Yeah, you can see this coming a mile away, can't you. But not me, because I have evidently decided to hit the daily double. So I say, okay, why don't we start over here and you can tell me all about your date, and he says—"

"Oh no."

"And he says, well to tell you the truth, it's not technically _over_ yet."

"Oh my God." She put her hands over her face, but she couldn't stifle the laugh that emerged.

"Yep. Thanks for laughing at me, by the way, I feel much better now. So I'm sitting there like, what the hell is he talking about, and there's about thirty excruciating seconds where I still don't get it, and he's just staring at me like I'm some kind of dumbass."

"Oh no," she said again, letting her head tip back in laughter now. "Oh baby."

"And this is where my daily double becomes a trifecta, because right about now is when Bruce walks out of the bedroom."

"Oh my God." Her laugh was a belly laugh too, the best laugh she'd had all day—all week, really, and it was all thanks to this ridiculous man she loved so much. 

"He's naked," Ollie says matter-of-factly, and she bent double, clutching at her middle, struggling for breath. 

"Oh my _God_ ," she gasped. It was just—the thought of what Ollie's face must have looked like, that was what did it for her. She couldn't stop laughing.

"We're getting a divorce," he said balefully. "We're getting a divorce, and then I'm going to cut your face out of all the pictures in the house and burn your things and drink myself into sad bloated oblivion. It ends today."

"Oh baby," she said. "Oh sweetheart." She was still laughing, but she got up and crawled into his lap and put her arms around him. She tried to quiet her laughter, and she kissed her way around his beard. "All right but," she said soothingly. "You have to see how this is a little funny."

"You're just trying to get out of me divorcing you," he grumped, and she smiled against his neck.

"Oh honey," she sighed. "You're not going to divorce me. You never signed a pre-nup, I could dismantle Queen Industries and park you at a homeless shelter and the law would be on my side."

"Well, my next marriage I'm getting me one of those. With a daily blowjob clause too. Just try and stop me."

"Oh, a blowjob, huh," she said with a smirk. "As a professional, I'm not sure I agree with the proposition that cocksucking is the answer to all of your emotional problems."

"Well, you got to start somewhere," he said, and she brushed her mouth against his. His hands came up her back, tangled in her hair. 

She let the kiss become messier, and she rearranged her night in her head—Oliver was going to need a little time and attention this evening, and case files could wait. She could soothe him a little, and he might eventually start seeing the humor in all this. She would wait to talk to him about Bruce, though; he might be able to take her laughter at his expense, but probably not a lecture from her just now on how actually, Hal and Bruce together made more sense than just about anything she'd heard in recent memory, and was maybe a great thing for both of them. She could point all that out later, after orgasm.


	7. Chapter 7

Hal took his time on the walk back to the house from the beach, and he kept his head down. Twenty minutes ago, he would have stopped to enjoy the warmth of the sun beating on his bare back, the powdery white sand between his toes, the turquoise water of the lagoon lapping at the shingle. Now he saw none of it.

He took the steps up to the house slowly, and thought about arranging his words. Not that there was any arrangement necessary. The facts stated themselves. At the veranda he paused, and leaned his head against the cool white plaster of the wall for just a second. 

_I thought you didn't like walls_ , Bruce had said just this morning.

_I like walls just fine, I've got nothing against walls. You think I had some traumatic wall experience I've been working to overcome? Shut up and fuck me._

_You talk too much._

_Yeah, and you fuck too slow._

His punishment for that, of course, had been Bruce slowing it down even more, so he could feel every inch of that cock sliding in and out of him, and then pressing, slowly pressing, relentlessly pressing right on his gland until he gasped and felt come leak, dribble, spatter the floor at his feet. _Oh Jesus fuck_ , he had moaned, and then Bruce had lost it, and started moving fast again.

"Everything all right?" Bruce was in the kitchen, standing at the sink rinsing dishes, when Hal finally pulled back the sliding door and came inside.

"No," Hal said, and Bruce shut off the water and watched him. 

_Fuck it, I'm not due on Oa for another two weeks_ , Hal had said, when he had seen the ring's alert earlier, felt the low trill of vibration.

_You need to take that?_

_Nah, I'll head down to the beach and call it up there. It's never good news, it can keep five minutes._

Bruce said nothing, and waited. "I have an assignment," Hal said. He kept his eyes down, because it would be easier that way. "I'm due to report to Oa in twenty-four Terran hours."

"Easy enough," Bruce said. "Can you lift off from here, or do you need us to fly back stateside first?"

Hal cleared his throat. Something in it kept wanting to shut tight. "It's. . . a different assignment," he said. "Not one I've had before. The Lantern squadron in Theta quadrant needs reinforcements, but more than that they need a senior Lantern in place to oversee this transition out of civil war. It's. . ."

He raised his eyes. He owed Bruce that much. "The assignment is for one Oan month."

"And how many Earth months is that," Bruce said quietly.

"About twenty-four," he said. "It's two years. It's. . ." He turned his head away and looked out the glass doors, staring hard at the lagoon. His fist were hard knots in his pockets. Kind of like the knot in his stomach.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I am so fucking sorry. I've never been sorrier for anything in my life. The timing sucks. Our. . ." he bowed his head again. "Our timing sucks."

Behind him, he heard the noise of Bruce closing drawers in the kitchen, putting up the last of the silverware. Such small domestic sounds, in the middle of the ruin of his life. Bruce still wasn't saying anything, but what was he supposed to say? What was Hal supposed to say? _Wait for me baby, I realize we've only been dating eleven days but hey, you're cool chilling for me for two years, right?_

No. This was their chance. Had been their chance. And it was gone now, and he would come back in two years and he would see Bruce at a League meeting, and they would shake hands and catch up and exchange some friendly words, and that would be that. The timing just sucked. 

He had been pissed at the universe before, after kissing Bruce on that station platform. He had been so mad, that the universe could let him taste this incredible thing, this thing that he suddenly knew he wanted with every fiber of his being, and then could take it away before he even had a chance at it. Well, turned out the universe had known what it was doing, and he had been wrong to push it, because this was about a thousand times more painful. 

Now, he knew what Bruce's face looked like when his eyelids fluttered open in the morning, and the way his face would soften when it rested on Hal. He knew the sound Bruce made when he was an inch from coming, and the low guttural moan of his coming, and the way he would kiss so hard it hurt, sometimes, like he was afraid of something. He knew the temperature Bruce liked his showers, and how he took his coffee, and how he sat when he was thinking, one knee drawn up like a ten-year-old. All the things he had known before, and never thought to love, and now it was too late. It was too much to un-know, and he shut his eyes against it. The tight fist in his gut became the tight fist at the end of his arm, and he turned and punched the wall as hard as he could. 

"Fuck!" he shouted, anger and frustration overwhelming even the pain. 

"Stop taking it out on my house. So we try this again in two years," Bruce said. Bruce was leaning against the sliding-glass door, his eyes on Hal. 

"Sure," Hal said. "Sure thing." 

"You don't think much of that idea."

"No, I don't. You're going to put your whole life on hold for someone you've been dating eleven days, if that even is what we're doing? So that I can maybe come back in two years, and we can maybe—" His throat closed entirely. God damn the Guardians, God damn them forever. "I don't have any right to ask that," he said at last, when he had control of his voice again. 

"No," Bruce said, "you don't."

He went back to the kitchen. He pulled a loaf of bread out of the pantry, and something from the fridge. "What are you doing?" Hal said.

"Making a sandwich. You want one?"

"I. . . no? Why are you making a sandwich?"

"Because I'm hungry," Bruce said. "So as I see it there are two responses to this situation."

"Anger, and denial?"

"Acceptance, and resistance. The only two options ever possible, in fact."

"Bruce. I can't not go where the Guardians send me, this is my—"

"Don't be an idiot, of course you're going. But instead of leaving with things at best unsettled between us, I suggest settling them. I suggest resisting the idea that this—" he made a vague gesture—"between us is over, because you are going away."

Hal watched Bruce peel off layers of turkey and center them meticulously on the bread. The man was as anal about making a sandwich as he was everything else. "Settling them," he said. "What exactly did you have in mind."

"Well, as I say there are two options. We thank each other for a very pleasant interlude, and go our separate ways. By all accounts the rational, much more practical solution."

"Okay," Hal said warily. "What's choice B?"

"We get married," he said, and Hal almost sputtered a laugh because for a minute it sound like Bruce had just said _we get married_ , which obviously he had not done. But then Bruce was looking up from slicing his sandwich—rocking the knife back and forth like it was a fucking artisanal baguette, for Christ's sake. Bruce's expression was bland and matter-of-fact.

"Wait," Hal said. "Wait wait wait. Go back to the. . . did you just say. . . are you serious? What did you just say?"

"You know what I said." 

"Okay," Hal said, trying to catch his breath. "Okay, let's review here. This is like, your third incredibly stupid idea, when it comes to the two of us."

"Yes," Bruce said. "But you've gone along with all of them so far, so I have reason to be hopeful." He took a careful bite of his sandwich, examining a stray bit of lettuce. 

"No no no," Hal said. "We're going to review. Stupid idea number one: _oh Hal we can't, we just can't, Justice League blah blah blah, team dynamics yakkity-yak, let's just never have sex and pine for each other from afar_. Have I misstated that plan?"

"Oversimplified, but in broad outlines, not inaccurate."

"Great. Stay with me. Then there was plan number two: _oh Hal let's just fuck each other stupid until it's all out of our systems, because obviously the more we have sex with each other, the less we are going to care about each other, and this whole wacky misadventure can be over_. In broad outlines, and if it's not too oversimplified, would you agree that that is why we are on this island in the first place?" 

"I would."

"And now. . . stupid idea number three? That we get _married?_ This is your plan now?"

"I have a good feeling about this one."

"How did this end up being my life?"

Bruce wiped at his mouth with a napkin, and set down his sandwich. "I admit," he said, "on the surface it might seem an unusual solution."

"Oh no, why would you say that, it makes perfect sense."

"It does, in fact. You go off to Theta quadrant, you do your job, and when you get back, assuming neither of us is killed in the meantime, we pick up where we left off. I could say to you, _I'll wait for you_ , but you would never believe that, and never believe you have the right to ask it. So I'm giving you the right. Go bring intergalactic peace knowing there's at least one less thing you have to worry about. Maybe you'll do your job better for that, and maybe I'll find the waiting easier."

He was serious. He was absolutely and completely serious. Hal's mind struggled to take it in. 

"And the other thing is this," Bruce said. He was frowning now, as though thinking how to arrange his words. "The thing is, we could just put all of this on hold for two years. We could do that. We could try to pick this up in two years, and maybe after a while of being together like this, we agree to get married—in four years' time, or five, or six. Can you honestly tell me you will know something about me—about us—in five years' time that you don't already know right now? What will more time give us, except _less_ time to know exactly the truth of things?"

Exactly the truth of things. That was what he had been trying to express earlier, when he had been talking to Ollie. That was what he had felt in his bones, that night on the station platform, eleven days, eleven lifetimes ago. The truth of things. 

"Nobody's going to like it," he said, and if Bruce heard his victory in that wary statement, he only showed it in a quirk of eyebrow.

"Nobody has to know," he said. 

"I report in twenty-four hours."

"Easily done. I call a few judges I know, and the whole thing is arranged within an hour of landing on the east coast. "

"There are. . . things about me you don't know."

"No," Bruce corrected. "There are circumstances I might not know, events you have yet to tell me. We have a lifetime to learn those. But there is nothing about you I don't know, because I know who you are, as you know me."

"This is fucking insane."

"Is that what you're saying because I've demolished every other objection, and you have nothing left? Or is that what you're saying because the answer is no?" Bruce wasn't messing with his sandwich any more, and it occurred to Hal he had never cared about the sandwich. He was gripping the counter and looking at Hal, eyes steady and locked on him. 

"That's what I'm saying because it is a true acknowledgement of the situation. And my answer is. . . my answer is why the hell not, it can't be any crazier than any of the other crazy shit I've done in my life."

Bruce's eyes narrowed, and his long slow smirk made strange things happen to Hal's insides. "We'll have that stamped on the napkins," he said. 

"Cool," Hal said. "Hey guess what, this means I'm gonna be rich, doesn't it. Hot damn. I feel like Lauren Bacall in How To Marry a Millionaire."

"I'm not a millionaire, I'm a billionaire."

"See, that's the argument you shoulda led with. This whole conversation could have been a lot shorter." He smirked back at Bruce, and they stayed like that, looking at each other across the room, and he was no longer fooled by any of the things they said out loud, because it was all surface noise, irrelevant turbulence of the waves crashing overhead. The real things they said were miles below, and quiet, and with their eyes—subaqueous vibrations that couldn't be put into words. And his eyes said _I don't fucking want to leave, this doesn't make it better_ , and Bruce's eyes said _I know, I know, but I'm here and I'm not going anywhere, and you will come back to me._

"I think maybe I will have a sandwich after all," he said, turning back to gaze out at the impossible blues of the lagoon, just visible beyond the bluff. But instead of fixing his sandwich, Bruce came and stood beside him and they watched the water together, and after a few minutes there were arms looped around his waist, and Hal was leaning back against his chest, and they stayed like that, just watching the view. 

"Nobody's gonna like it," he said again, and Bruce's answering rumble of "Screw them all, then," made him smile. 

"And what if I wanted everybody to know?"

"That would be all right, too," Bruce said. Warm lips brushed his neck, kissed into his hairline. Hal could still smell a little mayonnaise, from the sandwich.


	8. Chapter 8

"So this is kind of a treat," Clark said. "Here it is not even Thursday."

"Mm," Bruce said. He was busy looking out the diner window, apparently distracted by a passerby. In fact he had been distracted ever since he had shown up at the _Planet_ suggesting lunch, and Clark had the feeling that nine-tenths of what he was saying was going in one ear and out the other. "I agree," Bruce said.

"With what?"

"With. . . what you were saying."

"I wasn't saying anything. I was just remarking how nice it is to break our routine a little. I might even mix things up by ordering a cherry pie."

"Mm." Bruce was back to looking out the window.

"Is there someplace you'd rather be? Because I know I'm not the world's most fascinating conversationalist, but you could at least pretend to be paying attention to what I'm saying. Is everything all right?"

"With what?"

"With—forget it. What did you want to talk to me about?"

"You're assuming I have to have something I want to talk about. Can't I just want to have lunch with you?"

Clark raised an eyebrow. "Voluntary socializing, outside of your normal routine. Yeah, I'd say something's up. Is everything okay with the boys?"

"Fine. They're fine."

"Dick and Barbara?"

"Also fine, as far as I know."

"So. . . " Clark spread his hands, and looked at his friend expectantly. He knew nothing would come of pressing Bruce, who would talk when he was ready. But he was getting mildly alarmed at Bruce's demeanor. If Bruce were anyone else, he would say he was nervous. 

"There is. . . something," Bruce said. "But it doesn't have anything to do with any of the boys, or the League. It's. . . personal."

"Okay," Clark said, being as encouraging as possible. There was never any telling what Bruce would deem "personal." That could be anything from Two-Face's latest plot, to the recipe for Martha Kent's peach cobbler — which he had sent to Alfred just last week, so it probably wasn't that. He waited patiently.

"I got married," Bruce said abruptly, and long experience in Bruce kept Clark from expressing any emotion on his face other than polite attention. "Chess pie," Bruce said to the waitress. "Double coffee." 

"Nothing, thanks," Clark said, turning back to Bruce. "I. . . could we go back to what you were just saying?"

"I said, I got married." His voice was brusque, belligerent almost.

"Okay," Clark said. "Well. . . do you mean, you got married in a drunken stunt, Brucie Wayne kind of way, or that you got married in a. . . in the actual way?"

"I don't know what you mean by the _actual_ way," Bruce said testily. "But I was sober at the time, and it wasn't. . ." He fiddled with the paper napkin roll on the table. He stared at the table so long Clark thought maybe he wasn't going to say any more. "Sorry," he said finally. "I'm not doing very well at this."

"You're doing fine."

He gave Clark a sardonic smile. "Only you would say that. What I'm trying to tell you is, I got. . . actually married. To someone I. . . care about." And then the sardonic smile bled over, for just a fraction of a second, into something like a real smile, that softened the lines around his mouth, before he clamped it back down. But it was enough for Clark to see.

"Congratulations," he said.

Bruce's glance was sharp. "That's all you have to say? Don't you want to know who?"

"Of course I do. But all I need to know is, it's someone who made you smile."

The smile threatened to re-erupt, and Clark saw him stare fixedly out the window to suppress it. It occurred to him that what he had taken for signs of nervousness or gastric distress had in fact been signs of something very different. It was startlingly possible that Bruce was happy. Clark leaned forward.

"So, okay," he said. "Now is when I get to play twenty questions."

"Clark—"

"No, don't spoil my fun. Someone you've known a long time, or someone you've just met?"

Bruce sighed. "This is ridiculous. And twenty questions demands a yes or no answer."

"See, you do know how to play. Someone you just met?"

"No, of course not, what sort of idiot—"

"Uh uh, I'm asking the questions. So, okay, someone you've known a long time. . . so it's someone I know too?"

"Yes," he sighed again.

"Better and better. Someone outside the League?"

He caught Bruce's hesitation. "No."

The waitress brought his pie and poured him his coffee, and Clark used the pause to mask his surprise. "You've been seeing someone in the League," he said.

"Yes." Bruce was certainly concentrating a great deal on stirring his coffee, for someone who took it black. 

"Ahh. . . okay. That's. . . kind of a departure from your cardinal rule, there."

"I'm aware of that. Believe me, I tried. . . not to."

He could hear what a world was contained in that _tried not to_. Bruce would have tormented himself, would have beaten himself black and blue. For Bruce to say he tried not to was to say that whoever this was must be a force of nature, must be. . . 

"Diana," he said. His lips felt strangely numb, which he was telling himself just the surprise. It was just the surprise of it. That was why Bruce had sought him out like this. That was the meaning of the 'let's have lunch at the diner' thing in the middle of the week like this. He had wanted to tell Clark alone. And it was fine, it was completely fine, they had both agreed to stop, it had been a mutual thing, and he was completely over it, over her. He told himself he had kept every reaction off his face, but the way Bruce was looking at him told him he had maybe not been successful.

"Clark," he said, and his voice was softer than before. "It's not Diana, I promise. You think I would do that? You think I don't know?"

It was Clark's turn to fiddle with the useless napkin roll. "Right," he said. "Sorry."

Bruce was still studying him. "She looks the same way, you know," he said. "Whenever she talks about you."

"You were the one who said it was a bad idea in the first place."

"Well, I once said a whole lot of bullshit."

Clark laughed out loud at that, and was pleased at the small echo of smile on Bruce's face. "Boy, do I need to have a recording of that," he said. "But come on, it's your love life we're talking about, not mine."

"Oh, I don't have a love life," Bruce said, tapping his spoon on his coffee rim and setting it aside. "Mine is currently in the Theta quadrant for at last another eighteen months, and that's if I'm lucky."

Clark frowned. "In the Theta quadrant? Where Hal just got assigned? Wait a minute — are you telling me—does _Hal_ know who this is? You told _Hal Jordan_ who you were seeing before you told _me_? I just—okay, yes, that hurts. You talk about prizing our relationship, and then you go and trust that. . . that blustering immature jerk with a secret like that, a man who never once in his life—"

"Watch it," Bruce said. 

"You're defending _Hal_ now, of all people?"

"No, I'm suggesting you watch your mouth about my husband." Bruce was unwrapping his fork from the napkin roll and starting on his pie. 

Clark just blinked at him. There was absolutely nothing in Bruce's face or voice that suggested he was. . . . 

"You're joking," he said.

Bruce took a bite of his pie and wiped his mouth. He took another swallow of coffee before he raised his eyes to Clark's. "I'm not," he said. Someone who didn't know Bruce would have said he was a man enjoying his coffee and pie. But there was nothing in those ice-lake eyes that was missing a twitch of muscle on Clark's face. He was tracking everything in Clark's eyes. It was a test that would not come again. 

On instinct, Clark reached for him. 

He closed his hand on Bruce's and squeezed it. "Bruce," he managed. "I. . . wow. I. . . could not have screwed that up any more if I had tried."

"You didn't do so bad."

"I just. . ." He shook his head, trying to process this information. His head was still reeling. 

That Bruce would have felt a deep enough connection with someone to marry them — that was the thing he couldn't even comprehend, somehow. Not to say that Bruce didn't feel deeply; he had always suspected the man kept such a careful leash on his emotions because in fact he felt extraordinarily strong emotions. He had known Bruce's capacity for love was tremendous, was fierce and boundless. But that Bruce would have trusted enough to let go like that. . . that was what was amazing to him. 

And then, that the object of that trust would be a man. . . that was another surprise. He had known Bruce liked sleeping with all kinds, but he had chalked that up to the catholicity of Bruce's tastes—something along the lines of liking pinot noirs as well as pinot grigios, instead of an innate quality. That had maybe been an error on his part, and a hurtful one.

And Hal. _Hal_ , of all people. Hal, who had rarely opened his mouth around Bruce except to needle him, to criticize, to challenge, who had never shown Bruce proper respect. . . Hal, who always had a wry remark to mutter when Bruce demanded seriousness. . . Hal, who took foolish, extravagant risks. . . hot-headed, hare-brained, smart-mouthed Hal, who. . . who. . .

Okay, fine, he could see it. But only if—

"I wonder which of your objections you're going to voice first?" Bruce was saying, still watching Clark's face.

"Does he love you?" Clark said, leaning forward, his voice low and intent. "I don't care about anything else. Forget anything else. Does he love you like you ought to be loved? I mean like, burning-down-the-sun, spill-all-the-blood-in-his-body, tsunami-force kind of love? Is that how he loves you?"

Bruce's fingers were tracing the rim of his coffee cup, and his eyes were down. At first Clark thought Bruce was avoiding looking at him; then he realized that Bruce was in fact a thousand miles away, remembering things that were not for sharing with Clark, and there was the strangest look around his eyes. It wasn't something Clark had ever seen on Bruce's face before, some strange fierce tenderness he had only caught glimpses of before, when in unguarded moments Bruce had glanced at Dick, or Damian, or Tim, or Jason—or when Alfred was dozing in his chair and Bruce put a quiet hand on his shoulder. Contained and quickly smothered glimpses, but this was something else; this was something Clark could feel in his own body across the narrow formica table. Bruce was not raising his eyes, but he didn't need to. Clark could see the answer anyway.

"It is," Bruce said finally, his voice quiet.

* * *

"Okay but that's—oh _fuck_ —okay but we have to—shit, Bruce, what are you—we are on kind of a—kind of a—fucking _Christ_ —schedule here, what are you—oh God I am not going to make it I am going to be late they are going to kill me— _fuck_ that feels so good—"

"Are you having some sort of psychotic break?"

Hal lifted his head and tried to formulate words. "I am trying to—to balance two very important needs here, and you—"

"Mm?" Bruce said. He had lowered his head again, and did something with his tongue that made Hal tip his head back again. "And what would those needs be?"

"The need to—ah—the need to be— _ahhh_ —on time for my duty report and the need to—oh God don't stop—the need to—come in your mouth oh fuck fuck don't stop—"

Which was, of course, exactly the point that Bruce chose to stop, because of fucking course. "Why are you so worried about schedule? We've got plenty of time."

Hal struggled to bring the room back into focus. "Not and make it to the courthouse, and then still leave me time to stop by my apartment and—"

"Why do we need to go to the courthouse?"

Hal blinked at him. "Is that—do you not want to. . . do that anymore? I mean. . . if you don't. . . "

"Of course I want to. I just meant we don't need to go to the courthouse. We can take care of that here at the house."

"Uhh. . . wait, is this where you tell me Alfred is a certified minister of the World Church of the Mystical Internet? Because I would totally believe that, by the way."

"No." Bruce was tracing an absentminded finger down Hal's thighs. "He isn't, though that isn't a bad idea, and I should probably look into that. I just meant, I've made arrangements for someone to come here, in order to save time. You have plenty of time to go back to your place afterward and grab whatever it is you take with you missions—a thumb drive of porn, probably—and still make it to Oa on time."

"Oh," Hal said. "Awesome. Then by all means carry on."

"Mm. I'm thinking not, now. You were proving too easily distractible. I don't think you're that into it."

Hal gasped and raised his head. His cock was purple and practically dripping with his own slick and Bruce's saliva. Bruce was rubbing his thumb on the base a little bit, thoughtfully. "I swear I'm into it," he panted. "I swear. Just. . . do that thing you were doing, it felt so good. Please I just. . . I'm so close."

"I know you are," Bruce said, amusement in his voice. "I'm just weighing my options."

"Okay but can you—can you just—"

If he had been hoping Bruce was going to crawl back up and swallow him whole, he was gravely disappointed. Bruce sucked cock like nothing he had ever experienced before, but he had strange ideas in bed just like he did out of it, and once he took a notion it didn't dislodge from his brain. Right now, his notion was to suck the swollen mushroomy head of Hal's cock, popping it in and out of his mouth until Hal's eyes were stinging and his throat groaning. 

"Okay but—God I need—I need you to—fuck, _please_ —"

"Please what?"

"I need your mouth on me to come, dammit!"

Bruce's smile was just wickeder. "No you don't," he said, and now his tongue was flicking the underside of his cockhead like the murderous traitorous bitch it was, and Hal gripped the sheets and came in a delicious unstoppable surge, a tremendous thrusting geyser that had his thighs shaking and the last shudders of wet dribbling down his cock. 

"Fuck," he moaned, drained and wrung. There appeared to be cum on Bruce's ceiling. Holy shit, that was going to be a hard one to explain to Alfred. 

Bruce was climbing up on top of him, hastily unbuttoning. He was shoving his pants down and pressing down on top of Hal, and the cool collected observer of a few minutes ago was gone—he was good and cranked, and Hal knew what he wanted. Bruce loved grinding almost as much as he loved watching Hal come. 

Hal shifted and winced. "Yeah, I don't know," he said. "I'm kind of done."

"I know _you_ are."

"Yeah, but I'm just bored now."

"You little shit," Bruce growled, and Hal started laughing. He curled his legs up around Bruce's and pulled Bruce's beautiful mouth down to his. 

"Come on, baby," he whispered. "Come on, ride me, I know you want to. Let me feel it on me."

Bruce's arms tightened on him, Bruce's breath was hot on his neck, and everything in Hal's chest ached with _last time last time_. It wasn't fair, they had just gotten started and now he was leaving, and everything was all screwed to hell, but for now there was Bruce on top of him, Bruce who was riding him with soft hungry grunts, Bruce whose stiff cock was pushing at him, whose fingers were kneading him. 

Hal crooked his arm around Bruce's neck and held him hard, held him close. "Come on baby," he whispered again, and Bruce shuddered. The fingers dug in hard. Hal let his other hand stray down to Bruce's ass, where he felt the squeeze of those muscles in every spurt of Bruce's cock.

Bruce's whole body relaxed, and gained about seventy-five pounds, all of which settled onto Hal's spleen. "This is not my favorite part," he groaned.

"Shh," Bruce said. "Afterglow."

"How come it ruins your afterglow if I talk? Are you fantasizing that I am someone else?"

"Not very successfully."

Hal started laughing, and then there was Bruce's softer laugh above him, and their arms were still around each other. Neither wanted to move. Hal slid his fingers through Bruce's hair. "I like your bedroom," he whispered. "Maybe we can hang out here some when I get back."

"Maybe," Bruce said. "But let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Yeah, that's probably moving too fast, huh."

"A little. Being my husband is no reason to take liberties."

That was a rocket punch to the chest. He hadn't thought about that word before. Husband. He. . . was going to be one of those. Bruce had said it so casually, like it was a word, a phrase he said every day. _My husband_. "I see," Hal said, though his throat was tight. "So we've got ourselves one of those marriages of convenience."

"Well." Bruce shifted and stretched, glancing at his watch. "Not if we don't get up and get ourselves cleaned up. We've got fifteen minutes, think you can manage?"

He managed just fine, because nothing prepared you for going from sweaty and cum-covered to well-groomed and presentable in ten minutes flat like the military. He was trotting down the stairs buttoning his cuffs when he stopped. He took in the scene in the foyer — Bruce and the white-haired, tubby little man he was talking to. Hal froze. 

"Bruce," he said. "Can I. . . ah, talk to you a minute?"

Bruce looked up, and evidently Hal's alarm was plain on his face. "Of course," he said, and Hal followed him through a couple of rooms—Alfred was going to have to issue him a map to this place—and slid a set of doors shut behind them. "What's wrong," he said.

"That—who is that?"

Bruce looked surprised. "That's Father Carrow. He's an old family friend."

"You mean. . . your family's priest?"

Bruce's frown deepened. "Yes. He was rector at St. Bart's when I was young, and he married my parents. I've known him for a long time."

"But he's. . . a priest."

"Yes," Bruce said slowly. "Are we having some sort of problem here?"

Hal was pacing, trying not to clutch at his hair. It was a beautiful little room they were in — small and low-ceilinged, with dark paneled walls and mullioned windows that looked out on a garden of some kind. It was as pretty as every other place in this house, and just more evidence that he did not belong here. "Look," Hal tried. "When you—when we talked about doing this, on the island, you never said. . . I mean, I didn't realize. . ."

"I see," Bruce said, into the silence as Hal's words trailed off.

"No, I'm pretty sure you don't."

"It's not a problem. I will tell Father Carrow there's been a change of plans, and send him on his way."

"No, I don't—just _listen_ to me, will you just _listen_ for once? When we talked about doing this back on the island, I thought we were talking about, you know, a courthouse thing with you and me and four minutes in front of a justice of the peace, and I sign on a dotted line, and wham there we are. Right?"

Bruce looked like he was trying to follow. "I'm not sure I. . ."

"But now—now there's a _priest_ standing in your front hall, an actual goddamn _priest_. That's—that's a church wedding, all right, that's a for real wedding."

"I see," Bruce said. "And you were only down for this if it was a fake wedding?"

"I was only—" He clutched at his hair again. "I can't be married by a priest, all right? I just can't. It would be wrong."

Any other time, he would have laughed his ass off at the look of deep mystification on Bruce's face. "Wrong," Bruce repeated. "Now I'm sure I don't understand."

"Me and priests, it's—it's just not a good fit."

"Because you're a vampire?"

Hal sat on the edge of some priceless chair and put his head in his hands. How could he be bungling this so badly? "Hal," Bruce was saying, "I think maybe you have misunderstood. Father Carrow is not here on an evangelizing mission, and I'm about as Anglican as. . . well, someone who hasn't darkened the door of St. Bart's in twenty years, let's put it that way. Father Carrow's presence here is about his connection to the Wayne family, not some sort of religious statement."

"He's a priest," Hal said. "I can't—I can't do this in front of a priest."

"You're being an idiot. There is no legal difference between a marriage contracted before a priest and a marriage performed at City Hall."

"I am _not_ being an idiot, and there _is_ a difference! I may have only gone to two years of Catholic school but I know what a fucking sacrament is, all right, and there is a difference, I don't care what the law says. And I'm telling you, you can't marry _me_ in front of a priest, all right? That's what would be wrong, and I'm not going to let you do it, not before we—there are just things you don't know, all right, and I'm not going to—argh." He put his head back in his hands.

There was silence in the little room, and he half-expected to hear the slide of the doors, and Bruce walking out. That would be the end of it, and probably the end of them. He would leave and go off on this mission, and when he came back in two years' time, maybe Bruce would be polite and cordial, but distant, always distant, and the Bruce he had known in the last twelve days would be gone from him forever, and it would be his fault, he would have destroyed everything, because he hadn't been able to let Bruce stand in front of a priest and do this. 

He raised his head, and Bruce was just leaning against the wall, looking at him. "Why can't I marry you in front of a priest," he said. His voice was quiet. 

"Because," Hal sighed. "There are things you don't know about me. I'm not. . . priest wedding material."

"Father Carrow is an Episcopal priest, not a Catholic one."

"Yeah Bruce, thanks for the clarification. Because I thought you brought in a Catholic priest for your gay wedding, Jesus Christ. Exactly how stupid do you think I am?"

"Why can't I marry you in front of a priest," Bruce said again.

"Because I'm not going to let you stand in front of the priest who married your parents, in front of God and everybody, and marry—look, there are just things in my past you don't know about, okay? And I need to—I really need to confess here, before we do this."

"All right," Bruce said. "I'll send in Father Carrow. Though if you wouldn't mind making it fast—"

"What? No, I don't mean to a _priest_ , you moron. Just shut up and listen. I meant I need to confess this to you, and I've put it off because—well, for obvious reasons, but the thing is, what I should have told you earlier, is stuff about. . . when I was younger, and made some not-great decisions, I mean about stuff that was even a worse decision than blow, and that's saying something, but the thing is, what you have to know, the thing is, is that I'm a, I'm—"

"Here's a story," Bruce cut in. His face was hard to read, but he sounded angry. "It's one you might not know. When Jason was young, right after he came to live with me, he had a terrible problem with swearing. Could not open his mouth without swearing like a longshoreman, I mean the kind of swearing that would make the teacups rattle on Alfred's tray. So I set up a swear jar system, and every time he cursed, that was money he had to put in the jar."

"Okay, that's a great story, thanks for—"

"Except for some words," Bruce said. The anger was pulsing in his voice now. "Certain words, certain slurs, were grounds for immediate discipline. So I want you to think very carefully about what those words might have been, before you open your mouth to say one of them here, right now, to me, about—"

He turned abruptly away. He paced the little room, and Hal watched him in some confusion. "I just thought you deserved to know who was in your bed," Hal said quietly.

"I know who's in my bed, dammit. And you don't owe me any explanation for anything in your life. Look, do you not want to—if there are other reasons you're hesitating, please tell me now and not—yes, this is impulsive, I realize there are a thousand reasons we should—"

"Bruce. I want to get married."

Bruce stopped. "You do."

"Yes. And I was gonna say that I'd hustled. I wasn't going to say whore, because that would have sounded overly dramatic."

Bruce was silent. Hal watched his face. "You're dying to make some remark about that 'overly dramatic,' aren't you."

"Yes."

"That's some pretty impressive self-restraint there."

"I thought so, yes. Hal. If you think I give a shit about anything you did or didn't do when you were younger—believe me, nothing could be further from the truth. We can have long conversations about Hal's Troubled Past in the future if you like, and they can be as dramatic as you want. But right now, we're on a bit of a schedule, so if you still want to get married—"

"I do."

"Just repeat that in front of Father Carrow, and then I promise I'll let you go."

"Don't," Hal said. "Don't ever do that." He took Bruce's face in his hands and kissed him, kissed him like he should have been kissing him all this time. Every time another objection occurred to him, another reason they shouldn't be doing this, or he shouldn't be letting Bruce do this, he just kissed him harder. He had Bruce against the paneled wall, and Bruce was practically fucking melting into him, and—holy Christ, Bruce loved him. Somehow that had not occurred to him before, not in all its ramifications. They hadn't ever actually said the words, not like that. Maybe they never would.

He rested his forehead against Bruce's, but then Bruce's hand was on the back of his neck and he was pulling Hal's mouth back to his. Hal let himself be kissed. "Hal's troubled past," he murmured against Bruce's mouth. "You are such an asshole."

"Mm hm. All right, enough of this. I can't stand in front of Father Carrow with a hard-on."

"See, you do care what your priest thinks," Hal whispered, and felt the exhalation of Bruce's soft laugh against his face.

But Bruce had been right, about having the priest. There was something about the words, the stern solemn rhythm of that prose, that made this strange thing they were doing seem less strange. He had thought that whatever was going on between them was something unique and bizarre and totally unlike anything else,—probably something requiring a medical diagnosis and appropriate treatment—and it turned out it was maybe the most normal thing in the world, and the most common. Sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse. . . he let the resonances of the ancient vow stir around inside of him. _Until we are parted by death._

* * *

Clark sat in silence, watching Bruce finish his coffee. It was a lot of information to take in. It was hard to know what was the right thing to say. "I'm. . . happy for you," he tried.

"Yes, you look ecstatic."

"I'm happy that he loves you the way you deserve."

Bruce grunted, which was probably all the comment Clark's sentimentalism would get. "So. . . who else knows?"

"No one."

That took the wind from him. "Wait. Really? No one? Not even Dick?"

Bruce shook his head. "Well," he said. "That may not be strictly true. No one knows that we're married, it's true, but Oliver is aware that Hal and I are. . . more than friends, let's put it that way."

"You're kidding. _Oliver_?" It was hard to believe that Ollie, whose good humor far outweighed his powers of perception, would have picked up on that sort of thing when Clark had been blind to it.

"Yes. Let's just say that the man has a gift for bad timing."

Clark narrowed his eyes. "I'm not being pranked, am I?"

Bruce wiped his mouth with his napkin, thoughtfully. "No," he said. "But that is a beautiful thought. With enough effort, I could probably persuade you that I had married just about anybody, and guilt you into throwing us a party at which you had to pretend to be supportive. You would make excruciating toasts to the happy couple while everyone looked at you like you were insane. If it were a prank, it would be a good one."

"One of the best. It's not, is it?"

"Sadly no."

"Okay, just checking. I'll be honest, I'm still. . . absorbing."

"Well, you've got the better part of two years to absorb. Do you think that will be enough?"

That gave him pause. In the midst of everything else, he had forgotten about that part—about Hal being away in the Theta quadrant all that time. For a minute he left behind his own puzzlement and speculation and—yes, irritation at being left out of the loop like this, with even Oliver Queen knowing more than he did—and had instead a glimpse of what Bruce must be feeling, with Hal at the other end of the universe for so long a time. And then, the Theta quadrant. . . it wasn't exactly the safest place to be these days. All of that region was on the verge of civil war, and from what he had heard, the Lantern Corps was the thin green line holding back complete chaos out there. Add to that Hal's known capacity for rushing in without consideration for his personal safety, and. . . .

Bruce's every waking moment must be agony.

That thought was the one that wiped the board clear for Clark of everything else. He reached across the table and gripped his friend's hand again. "Have you heard from him? Is he okay?"

"He is," Bruce said gravely. "I got a message from him last about a week ago. They don't often get through, but occasionally I get lucky. He's fine."

"And what about you?"

That got him a quick glance. "I'm. . . waiting," he said. "This was the deal. Don't look at me like I deserve pity, I knew what I was doing."

"Sure," Clark said. "Okay. But part of me just can't believe it. Not just the Hal part, though I admit the more I think about it I can see it. But I really just can't believe you got married without me there. I admit, I never really thought you would marry anyone, but if you _did_ , I kind of assumed. . . well. I mean, I know there's Dick, and you might have picked him, but I always had this idea in my head that if you ever did, I would be there with you. Your best man, you know?"

"This is intended to make me feel guilty enough to agree to that party, isn't it?"

"Well." Clark smiled. "It wouldn't have to be a _big_ party."

"There is no way I would have a good time at this party."

"I'm okay with that. And you realize Dick is going to have your hide for this. I mean. . . all the hell you gave him about dating within the team, about being involved with someone you work with?"

Bruce winced. "Yes, that. . . had occurred to me."

Clark leaned his head back and laughed, loud enough so the waitress glanced over at them. "I bet it did," he said. "He's going to have a very good time with this. I would pay money to see that. Okay, here's the deal: in return for not inviting me to your wedding, I get a party, and I get to be there when you tell Dick."

"Absolutely not. I tell Dick on my own. And I decide who attends this ridiculous party."

"Not on your life. If I let you come up with the guest list, it will be four people, two of whom are you and Hal. Forget it, that would be like asking you to come up with party games."

"Party games?" Bruce repeated wanly, with a look of dawning horror, and Clark laughed again.

* * *

After Hal, it was Bruce's turn to say his vow, and Hal kept his eyes on their joined hands while Bruce said the words, and then Father Carrow was saying a few more things, and resting his hand on top of theirs, and then they were done, and Father Carrow was congratulating them both, and Bruce was escorting him to the door, still chatting with him genially, doing that charm thing Hal had seen him do at Dick's wedding. 

Dick's wedding, which had been a lifetime ago—and now his own wedding in the same house. It was funny, but he hadn't even realized it—he was standing in that same room where Bruce had shoved him in to rip off his boutonniere.

"Dammit," he said, when Bruce came back. "I should have worn that flower."

"Because you enjoy looking like an idiot?"

"A _rich_ idiot," he pointed out. "I am now motherfucking rolling in it. I want a jet ski." 

"I'll have one shipped to the Theta quadrant."

The mention of the Theta quadrant quieted him, and Bruce's wry smile evaporated too. The room was back to somber. "Yeah," Hal said. "Sounds good. The lakes in that quadrant are mainly methane, though, so that's probably not going to be very much fun."

"No," Bruce agreed.

They were quiet another minute, and Hal looked at Bruce's beautiful face in the slant of light through the watery panes. It did not seem possible that any human being could be that beautiful. "Well," Hal said. "I need to get going. Listen, I—after I run by my apartment, I'm just going to zeta up to the Watchtower, and I'll transport from there. Will you—will you do something for me?"

"Yes."

"Will you just stay here? Just. . . stay here, and don't come with me." 

Bruce was silent, but he didn't protest. "Well," Hal said again. "I should probably head on."

"I'm not going to do anything embarrassing," Bruce said. "Hal. What we just did is for us, not for anyone else. It's no one else's business. Just in case you were worried that if I went with you I would behave like some abandoned fishwife at the docks."

"You think that's why." Hal scrubbed at his face. "You think I'm worried you might—Jesus Christ. I want to remember you here, all right? Standing right there, with. . . with _that_ light on you, wearing _that_ , not the Batsuit, and looking at me like. . . like you don't know whether you want to punch me or kiss me."

"Guess," Bruce said, and there was something tight in his voice that made it sound not like Bruce's, and that broke Hal's heart open. Somehow he was across the room and in Bruce's arms, and he was never going to leave. He was never going to let go.

"Fuck," he gasped, as Bruce's arms tightened on him. He rested his head on Bruce's shoulder, and Bruce's head was on his. It was like a physical thing now, like some tangible wire strung from his gut into Bruce's, and when he stepped out of this room, out of Bruce's arms, he would rip out internal organs. It was like what he had felt on the subway platform, before, only a thousand times more intense now, a thousand times worse. Almost it made him believe in the whole "one flesh" thing, in the magic of the words Father Carrow had pronounced.

"You said this would make things easier," Hal whispered against Bruce's neck.

"I lied," Bruce whispered back.

* * *

Back at the Planet, Clark found it hard to concentrate. He was still having a hard time believing what Bruce had told him—or rather, not so much believing it as making it fit in his worldview. This morning, he hadn't lived in a world where Bruce could get married to someone, and this afternoon, he did. He hadn't known how to articulate that to Bruce without it sounding offensive, or without it sounding like the married to a man part was the thing he was fixating on, when it really wasn't. 

He tugged out his phone and texted Bruce, because it occurred to him there was an offer he should have made, and hadn't. _Hey_ , he wrote. _It's possible I could get out to the Theta quadrant next week, after this deadline. You want me to go check on Hal, make sure he's okay?_

Bruce's answer took a while, but it was pretty much what Clark had expected him to say. _Not a good idea_ , he wrote back. 

_Not a good idea as in, you're worried I might upset the balance of power in the Theta quadrant?_

_No_ , was the reply. _Not a good idea as in, I'd like my marriage not to be over before it's really started._

 _Fair enough_ , Clark wrote. He slipped his phone into his drawer and didn't think about it again until he heard its buzz about an hour later. He pulled it out and was surprised to see it was Bruce again. 

_However_ , he had written.

_However?_

_What do you think the odds are you could comfortably carry a jet ski to the Theta quadrant?_


End file.
